Meetings. More meetings. On all sorts of things: From lecture content to managing the "Virtual Learning Environment" (designed to be as hospitable an environment as the surface of Mars) to advising on maternity leave, mentoring, and the setting up of yet more committees. And term doesn't start for another two weeks. Thank goodness I'll be too busy teaching to be able to think about doing any more administration. And as for my research... I see that receding into the distance like a ship sailing slowly into the sunset.
Next week's excitement, though, is a final pre-term conference trip. One of those crazy conferences with so many talks (7 parallel sessions from 8.30 in the morning to almost 7.30 in the evening) that it's actually impossible to go to any talk other than one's own. In my own case, I'm giving two talks. I last gave a conference talk just three weeks ago (in Paris) and that talk, and these other two, are all non-overlapping in terms of their content. Never mind it being a crazy conference, it's driven me crazy just preparing for it.
This week's excitement: Aside from becoming a bona fide CEO of an American corporation, I learned that the increase in submissions to the journal I've been editing the past five and almost a half years has subsided and come to a much needed halt - we've had as many submissions in the first 38 weeks of this year as we had in the first 38 weeks of last year. Phew. So having spent five and a half years permanently running to catch up, I can now slow down, take stock, and breathe. Phew.
