To Do

Well, readers, it is a gray day here in the land of Crazy, pissing rain, and for this here blogger, with her allergies to mold and pollen, let's just say that it is a potent cocktail that is enough to make one want to scratch out one's eyes. Well, if it were not for the two different kinds of allergy medicine that Crazy takes to stave off the symptoms of her malady.

Oh god. I'm talking about myself in the third person, like Suede. I will stop right now. And I really do apologize. I would try to argue that it's different because "Crazy" isn't really my name, but I'm fairly certain that "Suede's" name is also not the one he was born with. I feel his name at birth might have been Darryl. But I digress.

But so I'm writing because I really need to organize my thoughts and figure out what needs to get done on this shitty day. So, things to do, in subcategories:

For Tenure Binder:

• Update CV.
• Update main letter in the front.
• Update letters for the different sections, which I'd taken out in the spring (foolish! foolish!) and re-include them.
• Switch in most recent syllabi, and add in any new material that is floating around (a few letters re: service, mostly, and some evals, and the eval stats, though problematically all of that stuff needs to be found in the pile of rubbish that is my office, so this may take a wee bit of time). Oh, and some emails. Sigh.
  All that's left is to throw a few sample evals from the spring with good comments on them in there.
• Minor re-organization of the binder, though admittedly, it's probably fine as it is.
• Determine whether I should remove some things from the binder to be made available upon request, which I was just notified is a totally fine thing to do, according to the provost. Not sure whether that would be advantageous or not.
• Ooh! Add thing into my binder about the fact that an early article of mine is cited a number of times in this dude's book about a thing not in my field! (Discovered this during my searching for myself on Amazon. I feel very fancy.)
  
• Ask Mentor whether he can look the thing over at the start of next week.

For JWIBSNA plus One:

• Look over updated CV to see whether there's anything that needs to be reorganized for job searching purposes, and make those changes if I decide that it is necessary.
• Send CV to recommenders along with relevant address(es) and deadlines and ask for letters from them. This is the part of things that I least want to do.
• Order transcripts.
• My freaking letter, which as far as I can tell needs a semi-major overhaul. Yes, I already started working on this, but whatever. It needs work.

For Teaching:

• Type in questions/insights into blackboard for one class.
• Organize all info sheets in handy binder and xfer grades that I've not been recording systematically (stupid! Stupid!).
• Grade some quizzes.
• Lament the fact that even with the scolding email I sent yesterday to the online class they are NOT DOING THEIR FREAKING WORK. It's not rocket science, people. Just follow the syllabus and the assignments. And yet, apparently, they don't get that this course requires them to work consistently throughout the semester. It's not a correspondence course where you turn stuff in whenever you want without penalty. There's not much that I can do if they're just not doing the assignments. And not communicating with me about what they don't understand until it's too late. And not using all of the handy documents I've put together that take them step-by-step through the how-to's of the course. I'm really trying to think of how this could be my fault, because if it is my fault, it would be in my power to fix it. As it is? Well, it seems like there will be a lot of unhappy people come grading time.

For the Book:

• I know, I was totally done, right? Well, but apparently I'm not totally done. I have a few small teensy things that I must do and get in the mail by Monday, so that we'll meet the deadline for going to press. And then, in theory, though I don't really believe this, the thing will come out in October. That's right. Indeed, the Amazon page is already up (sans image of the cover, as that's to be ready next week, apparently).

For Research:

• Do I want to go to that conference in the early part of the Spring semester? If so, I need to figure out what abstract to submit.... Decided I'm not giving a paper if I am going, though plan to email the conference organizer with the offer of chairing a panel.

For Personal:

• Find out whether Hometown Pal J. is coming to visit on Saturday (though I think I'm going to encourage her not to come - supposed to rain all weekend, which will make for shitty driving and will throw a wrench into our plans which were outdoor ones).
• Clean my fucking pigsty of a house.

Yep, I do believe that's all. I think that I will practice my "60% of a list is a huge achievement" rule, and see whether I can make a dent in all of this crap that way. Wish me luck.