We had a faculty meeting today. The full department, reunited. The chair had put together a nine-page agenda. That’s a lot to get through! He’s masterful at pulling this together. He knew exactly where to put the lunch break on such a large document, and we got to that moment precisely at lunch time. He also honors the scheduled ends of his meetings. This one was slated to run from 9:30 to 2:30 p.m., and no matter what, you know you’re going to be done at 2:30.
Hitting a hard out on a five hour meeting with all of the sidebars and non-sequiturs that come with a bunch of professors is a bit of magic. The guy has mastered it.
Still and all, that’s a full day, especially after the optional social hour that followed.
Here was a little note card I found in the classroom we were in.
I wonder if that applies to all of us. Can I refer to that on a day when my class plans don’t come off as well as I’d hoped? “This was the best me today. I remembered that!”
Anything but work is the theme of the social hour, which of course devolves to pedagogy or theory because it’s a room full of people that think about that stuff incessantly.
There’s a school of thought that you should take part in these with great interest. See and be seen. Collegiality and all of that. Another good reason is that there are still people in this department I don’t know especially well. So today I learned all about one fellow’s vacation-slash-retirement home he’s working on in Mexico, and someone else’s recent hiking adventures.
We left in time to enjoy some of the evening daylight, so it truly was a full day on campus. (We’re not even working yet, and yet.)
Not too long after I got home I found a nice little headache, and so I spent the evening bumbling around, rather than being productive or otherwise exercising. There’s always tomorrow for one, or both of those things.
