| | Pushing beads along parallel wires: that's the way I've taken to thinking about projects. Getting the fall schedule finalized is a matter of changing a few sections a week from Instructor: Staff to Instructor: Jones. Sending out review packets for promotion and tenure candidates is a matter of sending requests, waiting for responses, addressing and adapting letters, and sending out packets as each reviewer responds positively. Working on my project to describe the emergence of the rhetoric of science involves reading and then abstracting articles and books as they come to my attention, revising existing chapters to accommodate new material, and anticipating future chapters. Preparing for upper-division writing next year, I settle on texts, order desk copies, contact the bookstore to order for the sections, assign Ph.D. students to sections, begin marking out the course schedules. Finishing the basement project has turned out to require more calendar time than expected. I'm at the mudding the walls and sanding stage now. Soon, it will be painting the walls, then the floor, and finally contriving a ceiling. Getting the back yard in shape? I have a few post holes to dig so that we can rig up a short fence to keep Cody out of the freshly planted garden patch along the back fence. I have an adirondack chair, four plastic chairs, and one table to paint. Each of these projects, not to mention those I should be working on, lays claim to a bit of the week or the day. If I can push each bead a little bit further along the wire, some day, I tell myself, the beads will all arrive at the end of their travels, and that will be a wonderful day. At least this metaphor keeps me going. My metaphor during the semester (digging at the pile of work) was a disheartening metaphor because the pile just kept getting bigger.
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| | Posted 5/31/2009 6:30 AM - 5 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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