How I spend my time these days

 Life here in Enoughsville continues to be rich and full.  

On Monday morning, my husband walked me to work, kissed me good-bye, and then turned around and walked to the train that took him to the plane that took him to Europe for three weeks.

"I got a four-across row of seats all to myself on the flight over!!
It was wonderful. I did not sleep much,
but it was sooooooo nice to lie flat whenever I wanted to."

And what am I doing while he's away? A lot of job-related stuff, mostly.  This is my last semester of teaching (I thought that was true two years ago, so apparently I'm kind of like the opera singer, Beverly Sills,  who had multiple final tours).  Having said that, the phrase "semester of teaching" doesn't really describe the way I spend my days.  I'm mainly doing three kinds of things.

1. Hiring.  I'm on hiring committees for new people in our department, for a new senior administrator (Vice President of Silo X) at our College, and for an editor for a national math journal.  The tasks involved with these are quite different: in some cases (like the editor), I'm trying to be a recruiter and drum up good applicants, in others (like the VP), I'm one of many who is working with a professional search firm.  Job applications are often my weekend reading these days -- often, when I haven't come out with a newsletter some weekend, that was why.  The next week or two will be especially full with this aspect of my work.
   
   
2.  Serving as the don (an academic head) of a college house.  This is a job that comes with a lot of person-to-person interaction.   I advise students who have questions, students who have a lot of potential and are applying for fancy things, students who have fallen off the rails and need academic support.  I have three different committee meetings each week with other people related to my job (other dons, my house dean, our house student leaders).  I work with faculty who want to do programming in the house -- like, next week, we're going to have a showing of a past performance of Bizet's opera Carmen for one of the voice classes, and open it up to everyone.  And I get to do my own programming, including running a book club on Your Money or Your Life, or bringing to the house the Black History Month event I'd pulled together for my family a few years ago.

   

   A graffiti poster I put up in my college House.

   This is a job that gets to bring together a lot of the organizational aspects of my personality, and I like getting to be a little bit bossy about things and to be creative about designing events.
   
   
3. And of course, I teach.  I have just one class, which is over-full at 22 students.  I am super happy to be at a school where an upper-level class can be "over-full" at this level.  Still, I designed this course for about 16 students, and with this many people in it, the grading is a bit overwhelming.  My students have two different kinds of assignments each week,  and they're not the kind of computational "right or wrong" kind, but rather are creative drawing and writing assignments, so giving feedback is a big deal.  It's my own doing . . . but I am nonetheless locked into spending about 7 hours each week doing that grading. So, what was I doing Friday evening with my husband out of town?  I was grading my students' math/art projects, that's what!

In between all this, I'm trying to find time for the other parts of my life: reaching out to my family, being a good global citizen, staying in shape with my running buddies.  I feel like I'm managing with these, but just barely.  I'm so grateful that my family keeps reaching out to me: that I get to do math on Wednesday evenings with my granddaughter Achild, that Nelson calls me regularly, that Inkling comes over for waffles on most Sundays.  

The global citizen part is the aspect I feel is most keenly falling apart right now.  I attended an emotional roller coaster of a talk earlier this week on the responses of the Pakistani people to their devastating flood: there was so much suffering, so much courage -- stories of amazing heroism and innovation, but also an acknowledgement that the devastation there is a result of the kind of climate disruption and economic choices cause by people far away from the floods.  I want to think about this more.

While I was in the throes of feeling overwhelmed and inadequate about my global impact, I got this note from the mom of one of the children we sponsor in Zimbabwe.  It's not exactly saving the world, but it was the kind of encouragement I needed at the time. 

Thank you for the money that you sent,
we managed to pay fees, track suit, stationary,
exercise books, soap and covers.
25% was used for community allocation.
Thank you for the helping hand.

Oh, and I filed my taxes!  Now Turbo Tax keeps sending me texts like we're besties:

TT:  Great news, 'Snough ! Your federal return was accepted by the IRS.

So, that's the news from my corner of the planet this week, where I continue to be rich in my adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.