My messy office

So, I get an e-mail from my chair yesterday: first item, one of my students is appealing their grade. Or trying to. No, it is not the student I had so many problems with....it is someone who earned a failing grade and now somehow thinks if they complain enough they can make that grade go away. This person actually told my chair "I went to her for extra...help...and she said no" and my chair said, with a bit of pressing, she found out that that "extra help" I said no to was actually extra CREDIT. So, bah. My chair thinks it will be dismissed if the student even does bring it to the appeals committee.

The bigger item was that "Safety has flagged your office." I figured it was because of all the stacks of paper (I have a small office, we're expected to keep unhanded back student papers for at least a couple years, I'm not good at getting rid of stuff, arranging for recycling of office paper is a big pain...) But of course, my brain kind of ran away with me on it:

"What if it's your extra bookshelf, the one that keeps your office door from opening the full 100 degrees or whatever it is that it would open without that bookcase? What if they make you dispose of many of your books - because we all know books are a fire hazard?" I can't move stuff into my research lab because nearly all the "prime" storage space was co-opted by the person with which I share the lab (we moved into it at a time when I was out of town).

Then I thought about how embarrassing it was to have your office written up. How it is yet another sign that I fail at being an adult. That maybe I need to expect that letter from the Grown Up Reeducation Camp in the mail, where I'll be told to report at 0700 at some bus stop, and I can bring one suitcase, no t-shirts with cartoon characters on them, and God have mercy on my soul if I try to sneak a stuffed toy into my kit for comfort. (Grown Up Reeducation Camp is a much scarier prospect than being busted back to Magical Kindergarten would be).

So I kind of evaded the issue this morning after class, rather than going down and finding my chair right away. So she found me.

Turns out, the thing I was written up for was the cryptic "Housekeeping" Okay. I'm going to assume that means the paper. The chair seemed annoyed at Safety, not at me. So I guess I'm okay, except, yeah, I really do need to clear out my office. My chair did volunteer that maybe a student worker could do paper-shredding for me (of old exams and stuff I don't want just thrown in with other recyclable paper). But gah, the time. I guess I'm going to have to devote half an hour or so a couple days a week to this. Or maybe come in Friday and JUST do that. Ugh.

I guess I'll start with putting books away; that seems less painful than dealing with the paper.