It's been a rough day. I hadn't realized how draining it would be to talk with the newly appoint A-Dean, RP, about what the job involved, as I did yesterday. I'd looked forward to the meeting with pleasure - RP is a great choice for the position and I want to help him however I can. So what was it? Maybe revisiting all the tasks in such short order, together with the retrospective view I had while writing the "ETS to BITE" report on Thursday. My feelings were not "quitter's remorse" - I can truthfully say I have no regrets about having left. Maybe it was grieving for what might have been. And it was also a sense of sadness about the frustrations of hope. RP seems so vulnerable and alone. But I know that evaluation doesn't do justice to either his character or his ability.
So this morning, after a restless night when I revisited my former life in my semi-sleep, I created a "perpetual A-Dean's calendar" with annotations about the various tasks that come under the A-Dean's purview, sent it to him, and turned back to my new life.
Without much success. Herbert Simon's "The Sciences of the Artificial" is hardly a cliffhanger and without a preconceived framework it was too difficult to keep concentrating. Clearly "a weekend" (implying a break from intellectual work) is needed!
No comments:
Post a Comment