Ah, September. We hardly knew 'ya

No matter how well you think you might have prepared, the new academic year always hits like a tonne of bricks. The peace of working all day long in my home office, wearing clothes exclusively acquired from Costco and snacking at will was shattered and I had to schlep my ass to campus 3 days a week. Packing lunches? Ugh. Loud music for the welcome BBQ playing right outside my office window? Kill me. I like to think I coped reasonably well with the change but you'd have to ask my husband/grad students. I'm pretty sure almost everyone in that group would sell me out for a well-timed coffee or energy drink.

Does anyone else set new-term resolutions? Every semester, I like to imagine that the moment has finally come when I am going to stay on top of ALL my obligations, every last one of them. I'm going to check in with everybody every week. I'm going to get my grants written ahead of time and my manuscript revisions submitted without needing to request an extension. I'm going to take care of all the dumb administrative tasks before they pile up and require a tearful trip to the head secretary's office.

But here we are, one third down of the term down, two thirds to go (I don't really count December because at that point, it's all over but the crying). All necessary revisions have been sent back in, all lectures have been delivered (with varying levels of quality), and all grants were submitted before their respective deadlines. And we've got reading week coming up. Dare I hope that we might just make it? No, that would be foolish, like daring the academic gods to drop a few dozen tricouncil fellowships applications to review at the same time as I need to grade midterms. Wait...I just remembered something....