It Begins!

I've started having meetings and getting "training" here for school. So it's about to begin. The main reason we went through this whole move starts for real next Monday when I meet my 20+ advisees and try not to screw up their futures any worse than they will without my help. I quite possibly will not have a computer and printer to help me with this. I'm hoping I can actually move in to my office today but it depends on when the wife gets back with the car that is full of my books and files.

Actually, moving into the office has been a minor trial itself. It took me three weeks to finally get my keys. The folks who were there weren't ready to move out because their new office wasn't ready. So they couldn't turn in their keys. Until they were turned in, I couldn't get them. Perfectly reasonable but annoying. I also talked to maintenance and my office should have furniture today or tomorrow. Right now all it has is a desk from some grade school somewhere. I'm serious, this thing is the same size as the desk you had when you were in 4th grade. And my phone answering message currently has someone mispronouncing my last name and calling me Matt instead of Matthew.

Beyond that the last textbook I needed to finish up my pre-semester prep work took two extra weeks to show up. Luckily it looks like I'll be able to use it for at least the first time I teach this course because there isn't time to order another one.

For those of you reading who are college students or graduates, there is a ton of behind the scene work that we have to do to make it seem like everything in class is happening for a reason. We plan, we fine tune, we adjust, we tinker. Or at least those professors who give a damn do. I don't doubt there are professors out there who have no business being in front of a classroom. I'm just determined not to be one of them.

I also managed to lose my keys to my scooter the other day. Took me five hours to find and unpack the spares (somebody convinced me that I had packed them so I kept looking in places I would have put them to keep them safe and beating myself up mentally that I just couldn't remember where that was. Then I found them in someone else's luggage). But it turns out someone on campus found them AND turned them in to security. In Chicago they would have been long gone. So it's been testing but there are rays of sunshine other than the ones that gave me sunburn last week.