Since my head is pounding from congestion, and I have 30 min before I administer my first exam, I though I'd take a break from work and update the blog.
Life as a professor is good- incredibly busy, but good. I knew that there would be a lot to juggle at once, but am surprised by how quickly it has come to be that way. Yesterday, things came to a head when I was trying to finish a grant (that I wrote in 1 days time) by 5pm, only realizing that I had promised office hours from 3-5pm to allow students to ask me questions on an exam that I had yet to write (the one I am giving in 30 min). In the midst of all this, accounting is bitching me out for having booked airline flights on the University Credit Card without have submitted an approved travel request. And of course, randomly met with a Masters student whose committee I am now on!
Mainly, I have learned that I just need to do things at about 80% quality. Much past that requires an exponential amount of more time. Take email for example. As a graduate student, I would mire over "important" email to make sure that my grammer was correct, statements couldn't be misread, etc. Now, I literally have forgotten the email I wrote about 30 seconds after sending it. I just don't have time to spend on it. A three page grant would have taken me 2 weeks at least to get into top shape. But when you only have a day, you only have a day... I think that my experience in doing these things has obviously shortened the amount of time it takes, but my key to survival has just been to stop dwelling on every detail and just get it off my desk.
Today marks the end of my teaching for a month's time. One would think that would leave me with lots of extra time. I suppose- lots of extra time to write two grants, resubmit 4 papers, write a 5th one, select a textbook for next semester's course, actually get next semester's course scheduled and in the catalog... oh dear- I am going to stop blogging and get back to work!
Strangely though, I am loving this!
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