Office Meditations

When I make plans to be productive at the office, I am constantly interrupted by students. Today, however, is the first exception ever. Thanks Spring Break. It has been wonderfully quiet on campus since we (the faculty) came back from break. I'm looking forward to the students coming back at some point. But seriously, it was so strange that I had my best attendance in my earliest class yesterday. As the day went on, I saw less and less students--not just in my class, but even walking around campus. It was like a ghost town by 5:00 and I couldn't understand why until it hit me--it is 5:00, it is in the high 70s, and there are still a few hours of daylight. I think we've officially lost our students to the coastline for the rest of the semester. Sigh. Well if that is the case: Thanks warm weather! Thanks sunshine! I'm finally getting some work done at the office!

In other the spirit of sunshine, I received a lot of good news yesterday, on one of my longest Tuesdays yet. After only a couple hours of sleep Monday night due to grading and rereading Assata, I had to be on campus extra early for the annual meeting with Chair. The meeting went really well, and my wonderful efficient chair had a nice report typed up for me that we just reviewed. The report was warm and positive and indicated that I'm on the right track--yeah! Later in the day I learned that my most recent short article was accepted for a reference work in my subfield. I'm really excited about that because it was a last minute invitation to write by a Big name in the discipline--so that was very cool news. Lastly, I learned I am among a small group of faculty selected to attend a summer tech program that my institution puts on each year. I was afraid that they didn't have enough applicants because they extended the deadline, but it turns out there were many more applicants than there were available seats. So I'm so excited. We get all kinds of new technology for participating and extra summer $$ which I could definitely use!

Hopefully the increasing sunshine is a sign on more positive things to come for this half of the semester--maybe spring is just what I need to fight off these winter blues. (Ok back to work).