Friday, April 13, 2012

That Time of the Semester Thou Mayst in Me Behold

My office is a mess. I get cranky when my office is a mess, and need to take some time and clean it up.

Mostly it's a mess because there are stacks of books that I've used or referred to but not reshelved appropriately. And it's time. I've also gotten a few new books that need to find their proper place.

Then there are stacks of papers, revisions, research stuff, committee work. I have a bad stacking habit. The thing is, when something I stack will get done and moved on (for example, a stack of papers gets graded, recorded, and handed back), then the temporarly stack isn't a problem. It's the stacks that stick around for very long that are a problem.

This weekend's task list looks like this:

1 big stack for my seminar
1 smallish stack of revisions
1 smallish stack for my seminar
1 play to read for the first time every (I know! What was I thinking?)
Prep that same play for discussion

I've got an idea for a paper, but it's out of my usual comfort zone. Still, it's an idea. I went to the library yesterday and got a couple of books by the same author whose one text I want to look at. I'm going to read through them, just to make sure I'm familiar with what the author's written, and to check if there's something similar happening in these other works that should be included in my argument. Fortunately, these works don't involve learning a new language or anything. And the writer is pretty readable.

Oddly, this writer reminds me in some ways of a blogger whose work I enjoy (but who isn't on my sidebar, though maybe I should add the blogger?). Except I find the blogger more successful as a writer, though the blogger isn't a professional writer in the same way.

It looks like a good weekend ahead. It may rain, in which case I won't mow. And there's a bike race on (Amstel Gold), and I think I'll be able to watch a live feed of it if I get up early on Sunday.

2 comments:

  1. I'm a stacker, too. But my office, somehow, stays lots more tidy than my house. I guess it's because I'm only dealing with my own mess and not three other people's messes. That's not to say that there aren't stacks in my office. Oh, they're there. It's just that they aren't overwhelming, like our house is. :-/

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  2. I love the title of this post. :-)

    Sounds like a great weekend -- enjoy!

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