Just a little bit of a terror-post of the World's MOst Tedious Posts variety. I am feeling a little crushed by work.
I thought my fall was looking crazy enough. I have at least twice the number of students that I had last year. Fine and manageable, in and of itself. But in the first two months after classes start, I have two conferences to go to - both of which are intimidating - and hence two papers to write...one from scratch. I have a huge SSHRC grant proposal to submit by October 15 -separate post coming about the particular terror associated with that! I have two separate visitors, who are coming for 4-5 days each. One of whom is my mother.
And - this in the wake of a meeting with Unit Head and other Close Colleague yesterday - since I am growing and developing this little program: fully fleshed-out proposals (i.e. basically full syllabi) for four new courses to go on the books, as well as paperwork and proposals to change the program's name, and paperwork for changing prereq's and structures for three more courses. All by October 18.
I am also aiming to run a half-marathon in early October, and my training was derailed for a month because of my back injury. I should be okay, having run one quite recently, but still.
Oy, is all I can say. I had damn well better get to work.
2 comments:
Hillaire, your schedule IS a marathon. Breathe. Bail on what you can. Find something that can be delayed until after October. Like maybe... March. Learn to say no. At this pace, they'll slap you on several committees and then make you chair. NO is a very handy word.
The thing is, growing the program like this is why I was hired. I AM the program. The Unit Head is part the head of an amalgamated bunch of programs, including mine. Other Colleague doesn't teach in the program right now, though she historically did. So I'm it! And this course stuff has to be done this fall so that they can make changes to the calendar for next year, and so we can put some of the new courses on the books.
At least it is basically going to protect me from other committee work. My Head has been quite adamant about that - my energy needs to go here.
In some ways, it's my own fault...I knew that this program stuff was coming, so why did I get myself into two conferences and say, "sure, I'll do a SSHRC proposal?" Well, because research is king, of course, at this university!! Sigh.
Thanks for your input, Belle!
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