20151211.0622

Today will see the end of my exam-giving for the term. It will be the last time I see my students from the current term--save for a brave or foolhardy few whose names have appeared in the rosters for my classes in the term yet to come. If I am lucky and diligent, it will see the end of my grading work for the term, as well, save perhaps the few minutes I will need to spend to send my grades and materials along to where they need to go. That, though, is simply doing paperwork, which is not the same thing; it is not unlike my posting reports and the like to the blog and website I currently maintain for my teaching and other work.

That "other work" continues to increase. I have a new freelance piece in progress; I received the order for it not long after posting yesterday's blog. I am not far into the supporting reading at this point, as I felt I should take care of a few other things before turning to the new project, but what I have read, I like so far. It is making the work that I will need to do easier to do. Not all of the books I get to read for the freelance work do so; some of them have the opposite effect, whether because they are badly written (but still somehow attract attention and money; I have to figure out how so that I can do it) or because they are simply not concerned with such things (not that I really expect them to be). Having a piece that reads easily and facilitates writing up is therefore certainly welcome. I could stand to have more such pieces, indeed.

The "other work" also includes more research activity, not only in the conference paper I am expected to present at Kalamazoo and so must draft sometime between now and early May or the article I have begun to compile and hope to see published in a leading journal, but also my ongoing work on the Robin Hobb annotated bibliography I maintain on my website. A piece has arrived through interlibrary loan; I need to pick it up so that I can read it and offer a useful summary of it in my Fedwren Project. (I probably also ought to look at drafting a short essay explicating the title and the appropriateness thereof for the project.) How I will integrate that into the other work I have scheduled in the next few days is unclear to me, but it is clear that I will get the work done. There is no other way for matters to proceed.

So I shall press on through this day, seeing how much I can get done to clear me of the lingering duties of the term so that I can attend to the many other things that are mine to do. As ever, I look forward to a productive break. Perhaps this will be the time my hopes are realized.