Monday Update, Wise Week Edition

And so, the annual week where I have waited too long to get my academic work done, so I spend about five days freaking out about getting the essay written before I get up there.  This year, the added degree of difficulty:  an entirely different schedule, consisting of afternoon bike rides; two sets of soccer practices and an additional flag football practice for Number One Son; and some evening meetings for me.

I coached Number One Son's soccer team on Saturday!  We were lacking the official coach, and the assistant coach was out, so I stepped up to essentially tell the boys where to stand on the field.  To my great surprise, they listened to me, and as the game went on, I got more vocal at helping guide their efforts.  I had a heck of a lot of fun, actually, and really enjoyed encouraging them as they did good stuff (we also won 6-0, and Number One Son scored his first two goals ever, so that helped).

A lot of hullabaloo at work about the results of some silly online employee survey we were all supposed to take last year (they even handed out mugs and cups and post-it note pads with a special logo).  The published results say that five persons in my department completed the survey, which is a mystery since everyone in the department remembers taking it. But since we have been called on the carpet for an apparently tepid response, we are to compose some sort of plan for addressing some of the shortcomings. I would be tempted to take it more seriously if the firm tasked with tabulating our responses had, you know, bothered to include all the responses that were given.  The whole exercise is silliness.

The more time we spend filling out online surveys, and doing administrative paperwork, and formatting documents to meet spec, the less time we have for doing the things that make our jobs meaningful (and count toward things like tenure and promotion):  research, writing, teaching.

On the bright side (and this is unsurprisingly unrelated to work), Number One Son is doing so much better at everything this year, it's night and day.  He really loves his second grade teacher, and has so much more confidence.