Time is Not on my Side

I checked my email between classes this morning to find that one of my three hours of meetings scheduled for the afternoon was cancelled.

This committee I'm on was facing a really difficult decision. We've had people from across campus come talk to us; we've received literally four inches of double-sided copies of letters and reports. I know I've read all the materials, taken notes, done some looking up of things to make connections. Other colleagues on the committee have spoken in ways that convince me they've equally prepared. We were supposed to meet today to act on the proposal.

There are probably 9 people on the committee; assume we each spent at least 5 hours reading the material and prepping, and another three hours in previous meetings together (including those where we listen to people). That's a lot of time and effort over the past weeks.

And the meeting's cancelled. Apparently Administrator_03 realized that s/he made a serious initial mistake in making the proposal and withdrew it, so the process is starting over, almost from the beginning. That puts the committee off the hook until some time next year, and probably puts me off the hook because I'll be in Asia. (I don't want to think about how many more trees will die for this process.)

But dang, the next time I hear an administrator talk about how much time faculty "waste" in governance, I'm going to have to bite my tongue to keep from talking about Administrator_03's poor management skills.

At any rate, the hour meant I got an extra half hour of grading AND got to have some lunch before the longer meeting of mind-numbing administrative BS.

I was almost totally caught up (as in done, with no grading to do) when I walked into my office on Monday morning. And now I have four stacks of things to grade. I already finished one small stack during the non-meeting.

And we have to do midterm grades for our first year students, and those have to be done by Friday, so I have to get their stacks done. And I have a stack for my once a week class (that came in today), that I try to get done by our meeting on Thursday. And the third class, well, they need to be done quickly, too! I suppose I should be grateful that we're expecting miserable weather so I won't be sad not to see the sun, eh?