Meetings and Happiness?

I've been teaching at my university for 19 years now, and I had one of my happiest semesters this semester. Why? I've been thinking about it, and among other reasons, I considered one surprising possibility: meetings. 

Now listen, if you asked me in most contexts, I'd tell you that I despise meetings. I do. Too often, they seem unnecessary and overly long. And in too many instances, them don't seem to go well.

But when I started trying to pinpoint my happiness at work this semester, I realized that I in fact had more standing/regular meetings than ever before. I didn't call them "meetings" though. I thought of them as me just talking with someone or a small group. In four notable instances, those talks took place during regular, scheduled moments, like, ummm, meetings. 

In short, those non-meeting meetings included weekly:

• Lunches with Donavan Ramon

• Conversations with Elizabeth Cali

• Extended check-ins with Cindy Reed

• Discussions with the IRIS Center folks 

For the purposes of tracking my experience, I decided to make sure I took note of those conversations and how it was associated with my happiness at work this past semester. I also think it's useful to give people a sense of what a being a professor can be like beyond the formal components like teaching classes and grading papers.