Saturday, March 22, 2008

Work, work, work

I've got to hit the ground running once we get to DFW, so here is the to-do *immediately* list.
  • AAA abstract due midnight tomorrow night to session organizer/chair. (I did some of this on the flight down--brain-storming about 4 pp. of ideas and random text to help me pull this together. I always have to save the left over verbiage from this process in a word file titled for the conference so I can remember, when it comes times to write the paper, what the HELL I was thinking when I agreed to present on such and such a topic. I suspect that will really be true for this particular session).
  • Design Grad Program ad for Proceedings volume (which I spent *every* spare minute of last month formatting on a super crappy borrowed university laptop).
  • Get Proceedings off to the printer. I'm having this done on campus and have already spec'd the costs and gotten board approval--so this should be relatively easy (assuming the *actual* printing and binding is done by a competent person).
  • Print out and digest 3 sets of reviewer remarks for ms. review that just came in and then get back to the editor. So far, I think the suggested revisions are all pretty much on target. I've got to completely rework my intro and conclusion (even I knew this was coming), build stronger transitions in some areas, and tighten up some analysis (but this will still require some significant work as I've got to do a bit more reading/research in a couple areas). I have a late June deadline for this, I think. (And *now* I know why I had such incredible ambivalence about that June conference in Leiden that really should have been right up my alley. No way I could have managed that paper and the revisions for this one.)
  • Write my paper for mid-April conference. Ack. This is really barreling down on me.
  • Come up with essay question #2 for my grad seminar (I think I promised to post that next week).
  • Get brand new colleague's first year file read by Wednesday afternoon in time to go into a (no doubt meaningless) RTP committee meeting. Thank god I missed the apparently highly entertaining (but equally meaningless) faculty meeting of last night.
  • Shop for and buy a new laptop. The computer people at the shop where I took my Toshiba had it for two weeks trying this and that and the other (including wiping the hard drive to absolutely NO avail). This shop is run by a cute Japanese couple, and when I went in to get the damned thing, they couldn't wait to tell me that once upon a time they sold Toshiba, but "you know, [flipping it over to show me the label on the bottom] they are made in China now" [tsk, tsk], "so we only sell Fujitsu now." Whatever.
  • Call two faculty members (other departments) about why we had to table their course proposals and then verbally walk them through the proper filling-out of forms. They'll be all indignant and offended. Just read the instructions people. Sigh.
  • Help new guest curator get her exhibit reception date set and clear some space for her to set up.

I think all this is do-able. I'm not waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat over anything. And tenure is finally sinking in. That's good. I'm okay with my academic life. I don't have to waste otherwise productive time writing statements about how great my work is or how much service I've engaged for the past year. I don't have to kowtow to or count on morons or people I don't respect in order to ensure my job security. I've always said I could polish up two articles in the time it took to get that damned binder together every fall, and now I know (for a fact!) that I was right. The departmental colleagues whom I actually care about are all about to get their tenure letters from our dean. Nice. I have no real complaints. Just lots of work that I (mostly) *want* to do.

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