Today I got my new office furniture. It’s nice, but it takes up so much space that there is barely room to maneuver. After a few minor hassles, everything is now set up. For a while I couldn’t get to the jacks to set up my phone and computer and I didn’t know how to set up the phone, but IT quickly handled that. Nearly all the annoyances of moving have been addressed. Still no mailboxes. Cleaning folk still don’t have access to my office to dump the trash or vacuum. But other than these two small things, everything else seems to be squared away. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not. I mean, whatever will I have to bitch about?
I have mixed feelings about my office location. Basically I have been moved away from most of the other faculty so I am fairly isolated from my colleagues. There is a great amount of traffic and people interrupt me regularly for my stapler.
I’m waiting to see how advising works. Previously, I rarely had to advise because students usually work their way down the hall looking for an available faculty member. Since I was at the end of the hall, I rarely had students visit for advising. We’ll see how this plays out in my new office later. I can see the possibility of either being swamped or ignored. I’m hoping I’ll be ignored.
Then there’s office hours. Since I’m so isolated, no one has any idea whether or not I’m in my office. Many of my colleagues skip their office hours regularly, but I’ve always been cautious because I know I’ll be caught. Plus, I’ve arranged my life such that I get all my work done during office hours and I never bring work home (except when the buildings are closed for the summer to save money). I watch many of my colleagues haul home stacks of things to grade and I hear them complain about not having weekends.
So, despite my irritability and foul mood at the beginning of the semester, things are going pretty well. I have an obscenely cushy job and I’m grateful for it.
