Presenting the Numbers
I was asked, after I coalesced the numbers, to present them to one of the school's councils this morning. Yesterday I refused to make a commitment to show up as I don't have a lot of reasons to be at school before I need to be. On the plus side, it was (about) an hour of paid time as I shifted the graphs from one document into a presentation; however, sitting with and presenting to a bunch of people who've made their life academics AND WHO want a say in every little detail didn't sound all that appealing.
On the plus side, the presentation went relatively well. I had the numbers and could say, "That is coming up," or, "Wait for it."
However, on the negative side, they wanted information that was not a part of the initial review of numbers. I could answer a lot of their questions with, "That is not available," or, "I don't have access to that data," or, "I can't answer that question."
The outcome of the experience was a personal (internal) question on why it is I want to go into academics. You watch the way in which decisions are made (by committee), especially with every person wanting their voice, their opinion, and their >whatever< heard and implemented... it is a wonder that people are actually educated. Well, not really... but the behind the scenes aspects of education are often a series of feint and counter-feint. Nothing really progressing, and what does progress is at a dead snails pace.
Wonder of wonders.
At the end of my presentation (that I thought about not attending this morning up until the last minute), and as I was leaving, the committee decided that the dean needed to have this information as well... either at some formal presentation or as a result of it being emailed to him.
What I thought would simply be a delineation of numbers, nothing big, feels like it has turned into a giant monster. I will probably hear more about it this afternoon when I am actually scheduled to be at work, but will wait until then to figure out what the what is going on.
Anyway, I got up and walked out of the house and saw that our neighbor (to the south) had his truck behind my car in the driveway and was moving wood out of the back of the truck onto a wood stack to the side of his house. They have an opening in their chainlink fence toward our house, which makes sense for him to use that to move wood... especially since the trek is considerably longer from his driveway... and had to move the truck out of the way so I could get out of the driveway. For a few moments, I was tempted to offer to help him move the wood entirely to avoid going to work, but then didn't because he was quick to move his truck and I was out the driveway and down the road before I could convince myself to delay my day to stack wood, reshower, redress, and other stuff.
When I got to work I discovered that (pretty much) everyone was there. Had to decide whether or not I was going to use my computer and log into the shared server to grab the information and change it, or see if someone would leave over... someone moved so I could sit at one of the desktop computers. On a side note, I am really liking the 24 inch iMac's the department uses and that we use. They are very nice. Erin needs one.
Anyway, that was my morning. My afternoon consisted of me reading that I needed to bring together more numbers and then create a report (before Friday) that outlines more data for the dean of the school I work in. Exciting. The whole thing, though, was rather anticlimactic, though.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly