Friday, July 2, 2021

Walk Me Through This

My brain has spent the last week buzzing back to the condo collapse just to the south of us.  My brain loves all the theories, but I'm still betting that we find that there was something like a sinkhole that opened beneath.  I've read the theories of concrete spalling and rebar rusting, but I am surrounded by buildings that are missing chunks of concrete.  As I've gone about my week, I've been observing rebar poking out from concrete on all sorts of buildings and parking garages, and those structures don't collapse.

I say that last sentence with both hope and fear, especially as I drive my car onto the parking deck at work.  It looks worse than any of the condo pictures, but as I look at the parking deck at work, I've been more worried about the outdoor metal staircase that's rusting into oblivion.

And now my brain has something new to buzz about:  a storm to our south.  I am already tired, and this hurricane season is only getting underway.  Usually I don't have much to monitor until September.  Sigh.

I have hopes that we don't have much to worry about, but I'm not stupid.  I've seen too many storms that look like nothing only to blow up into major hurricanes just before smashing onto shore.

I ended my administrator day yesterday on a call with all 5 campus directors, some key people from our New York office, and one person who had been Corporate in the old structure.  We talked about our past approach to hurricanes and whether or not anything needed to be changed.  We're lucky to have people in New York who can send out messages, should all or some of the Florida campuses lose power.

Earlier yesterday, I was part of a similar call, only it was about graduation.  We spent a good chunk of time talking about what we have done in the past, what worked and what didn't.  We did a bit of planning, but the bulk of the call was spent explaining to our new owners what our past practices have been.

I'm not complaining, but it is interesting to me that my administrator day was book-ended by these kinds of phone calls explaining processes and procedures to our new bosses.  Yesterday's key phrase was "Walk me through this."

Perhaps that's the key phrase more days than I know/realize.

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