scary shorts for faculty

seasonal snippets for our seniors

• your calendar shows more hours in committee than class this week
• the papers need to be graded before the next assignment is due
• oh, we charged a different overhead on that grant, a higher one
• 4070 unread e-mails
• ...including yours
• not including the 1600 from mailing lists that are automatically filtered to archive
• 146 of them have .doc attachments
• at the current rate it will take 37 weeks to catch up on arXiv again, but at least the time is now finite and positive
• yes, we are more than halfway through the semester
• "I just need your signature on this"
• "the deadline was last month
• :: "hey, I finished that section like we talked about, ball is in your court. I think it would be really great if we wrapped this up before the end of semester" :: x3
• the NSF and Spitzer deadlines are within one day of each other, and next month
• oh yes, I did agree to do that, didn't I, back at the beginning of semester (what was I thinking?)
• er, it is somewhere on my desk, I think
• it is time for letters of recommendation? already?
• "we think you should chair the committee"
• "Ethics training seminar for faculty. It is mandatory for everyone. Three hours. But you get a free lunch!"
• "We're changing your benefits options. We're dropping all the current providers and everyone will now have the same plan we negotiated with a new provider."
  "You can of course opt out and buy your own health insurance."