Professing and administering

It’s May. In a normal year, I’d be done. Teaching would be over for the semester, I would be working from home, focussing on research, creative writing, and theatre. I’d be working on my annual self-evaluation, a tedious (but necessary) process that involves reflection, self-expression, and documentation.

I’d be moving into full festival mode, writing grant proposals, deploying our small army of ad-sellers for the programme, reviewing images for our shows, creating content for the programme, developing the productions for the festival.

But I’m a Chair. The title is significant. As one of my colleagues insists everytime she sees me:

“Chairs don’t move!!”

So I’m in office every day, pushing paper, staring at screens, doing fiddly work that apparently has to be done. Writing emails, reports, requests. Signing forms. Being there for students and faculty with queries or in distress.

It’s madness, I tell ya. Madness.

Teaching & creating

So here’s where I find my sanity.

Two places.

Teaching

I’m teaching a class online this semester. More about that in another post—it’s worth an in-depth consideration. Students need it for graduation—not enough to have a regular class, but still. Had an online class meeting last night and I felt some progress.

New visitors to this blog—should that be visitors to this new blog? I dunno—will see a new tab at the top: Student Blogs. The students in this class—Selected Topics in Sociology: Spatial Justice—can submit two blog posts instead of a research paper, so I made a page for them. Let’s see what happens.

Creating

Many projects on the go, but the primary one is Short Tales 2019: a collection of ORIGINAL short plays, put together to make a single evening for Shakespeare in Paradise. We have 50 submissions, from which has to be crafted a single evening. It’s a job!

So. I also protect my sanity by working from home in the mornings and going to the office in the afternoons. It’s a compromise, and it keeps me sane. Mostly.