One more day

One more day of fieldwork this week (we are going out at the later time today - one of the students, who doesn't always need to come and work, has a child that needs to be dropped off at daycare). At least I know that today the area we will be finishing up in will be an easier area to sample.

My first piano lesson is today.

The meeting I am dreading but probably should not dread is tomorrow. I am assuming that because my dean is super-prepared and has stuff together, if she had wanted me to bring anything (like something related to a grade challenge or student complaint), I would have been told. I also got to thinking, it's possible she wants to do a "here are our expectations for everyone who makes Full Professor," considering the fact that in some circles tenure is kind of under attack by commentators because they come to believe - from a few individuals who do this - that once people get tenure or promotion or something like Full Professor, that they stop working and stop producing and refuse to serve on committees and suchlike.

I would hope the fact that (a) I found myself much busier after I had achieved tenure and (b) it was hard to schedule this meeting even though I'm not formally teaching this summer, shows that I'm not one of those people.

But, she may need to express those expectations all the same, which is fine, and I understand that. (Hopefully that's what the meeting will be.)

I suppose it could also be "someone wants you to be chair," which, I think I have enough ammunition (without referring to my personality quirks) to suggest why I shouldn't do it, at least not know. (If I inherited my father's knee genes, I probably have about fifteen more years before they start to go. Let me do field research for that time and then I'll serve as chair, when I'm too beat-up to go in the field any more.)

Yeah, I know, I'm obsessing about this. I think this stems from the fact that our previous administration was SO hands-off (which I admit I kind of liked) that the only time you were asked to meet with someone was when there was some problem. And also, back when I was asked to leave grad school the first time? From the Big Research I school? I was blindsided by a meeting where I was not expecting to get that news. And one thing I've learned about myself is that I look to past experience as prognostication for the future, and I usually wind up hitting on the worst possible situation. (I don't, for example, think of my dissertation defense - which was successful and my committee didn't even deliberate that long, or what a colleague told me about the meeting to decide my tenure - that he almost didn't show up because he took the letter from the committee chair to mean "We only need to meet if someone isn't 100% sure of voting "yes.")

But whatever.

I also think I'm having my typical summer problems. It's not quite what Churchill referred to as the "black dog," perhaps it's more of a black puppy or black chihuahua. But I don't like heat, my allergies get to bothering me (I am once again to the point of developing random inexplicable hives), and I develop a case of Can't Really Be Bothered To and also a little bit of Nothing Much Interests Me.

At least once I get home. I can work up enough enthusiasm for the work in the mornings, but in the evenings...of late, I've been going to bed early and reading old Maigret mysteries instead of working on much. (My house is kind of in a state. And I wound up freezing some of the food I bought on a grocery run over the weekend because I don't have the energy to cook it right now.)

This happens in the summer. I think the heat - and the fact that I can never quite get the house as cool as I'd really like it to be (I'd love for it to be 72, but I'm afraid of the energy usage that would cause, and I'm afraid of burning out my older airconditioning unit, even though the HVAC dudes have pronounced it sound). So I sleep kind of badly, and the heat and the antihistamines I have to take every day give me kind of intense dreams (Not really scary or what some medications euphemise as "vivid," but just all kinds of junk thrown around in my mind overnight and I wake up sort of tired.) One dream last night: I was hosting what was termed an "intelligent but at-risk" teenaged girl at my house (I was also, for some reason, living with my parents and brother and sister-in-law). The girl had seemed very studious when I met her, interested in sea shells, wanting to learn, but by the time she got to my house, she was wanting to "go out" and asking me what people did for "fun after dark" in my town. And she had a bunch of health problems I was expected to deal with, and it was just exhausting and frustrating.

(I wonder if part of the whole having-dreams-packed-with-stuff is related to the fact that one of my co-workers is a talker. I realize how little I actually talk, except when I need to be talking, when I get around someone who is a real talker. She's a good worker and I like working with her, but I admit I find the constant talking a little overwhelming. I don't think I can say anything, though...)

I will feel a lot better when tomorrow's meeting is over and I know what it's about though.