Saturday Snippets: The Life of a College Administrator, Post-Thanksgiving Week

Finally--the day in the week where I do not wish it was a week ago.  The long car ride home is never part of my favorite memories.  The past week has been a gentle re-entry week for the most part.  Let me make a list so that I remember:

--This year, my school has a different quarter system, so for part of the past week, we were between quarters.  On Monday, we had no students, so it was the gentlest way to return to work after Thanksgiving, with only a few people on campus working on final grades.

--We had workers show up on Thursday to move a huge lobby desk and construct a wall, to create a new office.  It wasn't as noisy as it could have been, but it did contribute to a sense of chaos since we only got notice that they were coming an hour before they showed up.

--My favorite part of the week may have been Thursday morning when I went to restock the student treat basket (granola bars and peanut butter crackers) and the student food pantry with a grant from Thrivent.  I like having a wide variety of food on hand for students who are experiencing an assortment of food issues.  I like the subtle message of care that it imparts.

--I did get my Rahab paper done.  Now on to the next papers, the last ones for my seminary classes!

--My grading for my online classes never seems to end, but soon it will.  That thought both fills me with hope and despair.

--We took down the autumn decorations, but we don't have much in the way of holiday decorations for the public spaces.  We got those on Friday, and they're a series of strange stars and snowflakes that need to be unfolded and hung from the ceiling.  I'm not sure we'll get around to that.  We are a campus of women who are not as young as we once were, and we don't need to be climbing on ladders for decorations that will need to be taken down in a few weeks.  

--The woman from a different campus who brought us our decorations acknowledged the complexity of the stars and snowflakes advised me to "make it a team effort."  What team exactly?

--Having said that, let me stress that I am lucky to have great colleagues on campus, people whom I really enjoy seeing every day.  But almost all of them are there to teach, which they do, which doesn't leave much time for decorating or doing any of the other more serious tasks of a campus.

--Here is one of my favorite memories of the week:

--I bought this giant poinsettia to help a colleague's child raise funds for marching band.  I confess that the cheesecake that arrived before Thanksgiving was a much more tasty way to support the children of a colleague.