Okay, that title is too dramatic, but WOW what a crazy week this has been. For being a short week (thanks to Labor Day), it sure has felt looooong. I feel like I am barely treading water to keep myself afloat! The start of the school year means a number of things:
- *POOF!* Welcome back, thousands of students! The campus goes from a ghost town to a bustling metropolis in a single day. Orientation does little to prepare for this, especially because freshmen can't park anywhere near where I do, and have all their own activities to participate in that don't involve our building. But I welcome the activity, and am excited to have students back :-) ...even though I have lousier parking (more exercise!).
- TONS of RIT emails.
- The restart of the Seminar Series. Not only does the series starting back up mean quite a bit of maintenance on my part, but other schools are now back in session also - which means a number of future presenters are getting their abstract/bios/et cetera to me simultaneously right now.
- The start of classes - which does impact me since I am continuing to take a graduate class each quarter. (I feel like I just finally recovered from my class over summer!)
- Regular Staff Council meetings. Since my tenure on Staff Council started in June, meetings have been irregular during the summer months. Now it's time for me to adjust to a regular meeting schedule... And since I'm on the Executive Committee, that means I am now busy from 2-4 every Thursday from now until forever. Plus there's the Ad-Hoc Outreach Committee that I am liaison for - we only meet once per month, but our one meeting so far has generated a fair amount of action items. Oh, AND there's Institute Council meetings once/month.
- Regular IS&T (Imaging Science & Technology Club) meetings every Friday.
- Espresso Cart socials 4 days a week
- And last but not least, my personal favorite: Noon-time skating every day!!!! Woo hoo!!!!!
On top of all of this going on this week, some other things happened to coincide:
- We have a new Assoc. Director of Alumni Relations for COS - which is GREAT news! It has been difficult to organize alumni events in the absence of a dedicated person over in Alumni Relations. So this is wonderful, but just happened to coincide with everything else busy going on in this short week - so I have planning upcoming receptions now on my plate with everything else.
- New CIS Promotional Items - which in turn need their own promoting, kind of. I'm advertising our new SWAG to entice people to participate with our Foursquare and Ambassador Program initiatives.
So all of those have been the major themes of my week, with even some more little things here and there - getting promo materials together for the Office of Graduate & Part Time Enrollment to use on their recruiting trips; promoting the espresso cart and seminar series; putting out fires regarding the seminar series live feed (or rather, an unannounced lack thereof...); getting in the hang of our foursquare presence; making connections with new people across campus; so on, so on. Oh my! And I really, REALLY need to get the next CIS Imaging Connection newsletter finished. I have been trying to get it done now for 2 weeks but between meetings, more pressing/urgent matters, and the not-quite-decided-on elements of the newsletter (namely, upcoming events and receptions), it remains incomplete. This is stressing me out quite a bit.
It has been a difficult week because I feel like I have been so busy, and yet I feel like I have gotten so little accomplished. For everything I can check off of my to-do list, 3 more things get put on! I don't mean to vent or sound negative; I am just trying to objectively and accurately illustrate how my week has been. I don't let it get me down - I prefer being busy because I love my job! Well, TGIF!
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