End of one class, midterms in another

Ahh, the leisurely life of a college professor! Here it is, two days before tax day, and here's how far behind I have gotten: I haven't yet marked the midterms in one class, and I haven't yet marked the midterms in the second class that ended last week! How did this happen?

It's easy. Take an already full work load, throw in hours of meetings about whether or not one school should merge with another, add a few faculty council meetings on the same topic, season with deciding whether or not I should toss my non-existent hat into the proverbial ring, and before you know it you've added about 100 hours to a month of 45 to 50 hour work weeks.

The good news is that the program is just about done for the institute; the bad news is that I now have a ton of letters to send out.

Now I only have two dissertation committees to get through, one where the dissertation is basically done and just needs some editing (Tom, we've got to get rid of the typos!) and one where the dissertation needs some major restructuring. Once I finish marking all the papers (about 12 hours or so of work), finish reading Tom's dissertation (another 6 hours should take care of it), and post the grades for the doctoral course I can take a deep breath.

Somehow in the midst of all of this I managed to submit a proposal to POD and to volunteer to be a reviewer, and I also managed to apply for and be accepted to the Faculty Resource Network Summer class for Designing Effective On-line Learning Environments.

Oh and did I mention that I'm on Team Seidenberg for the Relay for Life event to raise money for cancer? Now let me see, did I really leave corporate life for the more reasonably paced halls of academia? What was I thinking! I NEVER worked Sundays when I was in corporate life, and this is the second Sunday I've gone in to have lunch with accepted students and their families and make a presentation on political web sites. And I get to do this for almost as much as I was making when I left corporate life (once you adjust it all for inflation-in 1983 I was making $50,000-I'd have to be making $108,200 today to be making what I was making then, according to the Federal Reserve Bank at http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/research/data/us/calc/and I'm not making that much, especially since I didn't get a raise last year, but then I've mentioned that already, haven't I?