Lessons from the first week

1. There are a million little "situations," none of which am I fully up to speed on. This leaves me with the impression that everything is moving really quickly and I must paddle hard to get into the current and not tip over... This is a bit frightening because this is JULY. This is the deadest month there is in the world of academe. If it is this bad now, how bad will it be in April???

2. My office is bare and institutional. I didn't do much when I was interim, but it is time to get my brain around the fact that I'll be in this office for three years. Time to get some art and a comfy chair or couch that isn't a scary dust collector.

3. Email makes this job harder. There are usually many vaguely parallel conversations going on over email and rarely are the right people connected to each other. People going off half-cocked, sending poorly-informed messages sent to people all over the campus needs to stop. I'm sure phone calls can do the same kind of damage, but it is on email that I'm seeing it.

4. There are few big decisions to be made. My life is going to be minutiae, it seems.