I got an important date this week: the date my tenure paperwork is due.

January 24, 2014

Doesn’t that sound blissfully far away?  It’s actually much later than I expected. The casual things I’d heard to date had me convinced that everything had to be done and in by mid-December. Trying to juggle that with the current to do list was really starting to wear on my nerves. Getting (a) a confirmed date to plan around and (b) a date that was a month later than expected was a relief.

I won’t get away that easily at 5Y and 6Y: those are both due before Christmas. At least for those, however, I’ll have done this process once. I heard rumor we might even be able to submit our dossiers entirely online by then. We shall see. The university is still very print focused.

Of course, this does mean that I’ll be wallowing over the Christmas break in my papers but I can live with that.

The to do lists, of course, continue to be a highly organized disaster. I spent the entire commute to work yesterday adding things to my TeamBox lists and then once I got to work, a further 30-40 minutes figuring out what I’d missed, things that needed to be changed etc. The mobile app interface won’t let me see one whole list at a time but limits based on dates–at least as far as I can tell–so if I think I’ve forgotten something I have a tendency to add it again [not fully trusting my system, I know] but then I have duplicates. Checking *two* things off the list though, when I do that and find it again, that’s nice.

This evening I’m revising my service statement. I’m on semi-regular meetings now with the association university librarian who is assisting with my paperwork.  So far we’ve gone through a draft of my research statement, which he liked; my service statement –less bullet points, more narrative; and my list of accomplishments. That last one is an odd internal piece. It’s only used here in the library but the goal is to have a multi-page list detailing all of your accomplishments that are “librarianish.”  It’s a strange document to me because it duplicates a lot of what is in other places but they’ve asked for it and so I write. Mine is currently running about 3 pages long and I’m sure there will be a few more things added to it.

These drafts are not open-notebook. Bear with me until January and I’ll put the final versions up for you all to read once everything has gone in.  I feel bad enough knowing Box sends notifications to my colleague every time I work on these files. If you feel a burning desire to read any of my statements before then, you know where to find me online.

Later this week, I need to dig out the files of teaching reviews that I have in my office and turn them into something a little more functional. There is desire for standard deviations and stuff.

For now I’m squashing in buzzwords and trying to limit myself to a page for each statement. Did you know that with Helvetica and size 10 font, which is the smallest point size allowed, you can fit 600 words on a single 1″ margin page?