Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Office Moves

I've spent the last several work days in the midst of an office move.  Faithful readers of this blog might be saying, "Wait!  Didn't you just move to a different office back in February?"

Yes, I did, but the president and the dean who designed that move have themselves moved on.  The new dean has a different vision, so it was back to packing.

I thought I had pared down with the last office move, but as always, I was amazed at how much stuff I had to move.  And even though I was going only a few hundred yards, that still meant books to be boxed up and files to be moved and more boxes to be packed.

And now, those boxes need to be unpacked.  It's an amazing lack of productivity.  Happily, I have no pressing projects, so that lack of productivity isn't critical right now.  Still, it's rather sobering to think about it.  Will the new office locations be worth it in the end?  Time may or may not tell.

On the upside, I have a larger office--I can have more than one person sitting in the office, and they'll have room to stretch their legs.  In my old office, I had room for one chair.  Once, when a very tall student came to see me, he moved the chair into the door frame so that he could actually sit.

I have no windows.  But I have more bookcases.  Hurrah!

Once, I had a supervisor who moved from what I thought was a wonderful office to a decidedly lesser office.  We were friends, too, so I could ask her if it felt like a demotion.  She laughed and said that she'd been in so many offices that she didn't read too much into any office move.

I now laugh, because later I moved into that very same office that I once saw as a demotion.  And now, I miss that office the most.

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