Keeping Up

It is officially the "grind" part of the semester -- and not just for students. At this point, faculty are in full teacher mode of preparing courses, grading papers, meeting with students, preparing tests, etc. and also serving on committees (my afternoon was spent doing meetings).

But teaching college is still a great job if you can get it -- and not just because you having light summers. One of the fortunate things for me is to be able to work with such great colleagues. Even in this busy time of the year, I have managed to add to my reading list just through informal interactions with these colleagues. Tonight I am reading The Future of Management recommended by management professor Randy Schwering (and independently later by John Meyer). Professor Turner White keeps me well supplied with pertinent readings from the New York Times (a source I am reluctant to browse), New Yorker and other periodicals outside the Wall Street Journal. Myles Gartland earlier this semester added to my reading with Davenport's book on Competing on Analytics. Yesterday, Professor Perry, after a nice discussion whether work is personal, pitched a book simply titled Flow (good luck spelling the author's last name). I had to give it back to him -- I must wait until finals to work off my reading backlog. Today, I had a 10-minute chat with professor Tocco on our favorite history books related to WWII-- some of his like the biography of Truman must also get in line.

College students have lots of reading to do, too . . . I just hope they have half as much fun learning from those things they must read and find ways to read things they choose.

Update from last post: My NaNoWrimo daughters' work to date:
Taylor: 16,000 + words (target 50,000 +)
Rachel: 4,425 words (target 15,000 words)