huh. It's back. (I kept getting "internal server error" statements earlier).

Well, let the death of a thousand paper cuts begin. I received an e-mail this morning informing me that all faculty are expected to submit updated vitas for a [reason withheld in somewhat of a hope of protecting my anonymity]. Fine, that's fair, my vita is already updated.

But wait. It turns out that one of the individuals involved in this process has decided that the vitas must all be in the same, uniform format. Insert wail of despair and angry gnashing of teeth here.

Of course, my vita is not in the uniform format. And depending on how glitchy and crossgrained Word is going to be on the particular day I try to do it, it will take me between one and three hours to put it in the format, I predict.

I think of the many person-hours of time this will take all faculty on the campus and I almost get sick to my stomach. This is just like filling out tax forms - a giant time drain, and you have nothing particularly useful or new to show for it in the end.

I also have an exam to type, a week's worth of lectures to prepare for each of two classes, and twenty student papers to grade (it should be twenty-six but apparently six people are counting on my being in a good mood when they show up with them late...). Yes, it's Friday. I can hear all the happy tenured souls who don't care anymore whisking out the door as I sit here, once again explaining the "it's vs. its" usage rule on a student paper.

I am not happy.