1. 2013 is kicking my butt so far. My house is still in disarray. I haven't had a dresser for weeks and my clothes are in plastic bags in a too-small closet. There are still some Christmas presents on end tables. I am ready for this state of affairs to end.
2. Part of the trouble is that I am skating around the edge of being sick. Far better to skate around the edge than to plunge in, I know, but I have been a little achy, a little queasy, a little sore-throat-y for a week now. Here's hoping for good health and better sleep. (When oh WHEN will my daughter sleep better? I wish I knew.)
3. While my interview was approaching, I kept dreaming about it. I had a hard time -- a really hard time -- getting ready for my talk. I had thought it was scheduled for an hour, but I was actually only allotted 45 minutes. This meant I had a fair amount of unwelcome pruning to do. I worked and worked and worked and WORKED on that talk, all the while thinking I was going to stand up in front of the people I wanted so much to hire me and make an idiot of myself, and then a funny thing happened. On Wednesday morning I was filled with this...infusion of confidence. The chair asked me if I was ready and I said yes quite calmly, because suddenly I was. I walked into that room like it was my very own personal room, and proceeded to own it for the next 45 minutes. I was, as the kids say, kicking ass and taking names. All day long people told me how well the talk went. So that's good.
4. I could have handled the actual interviewy parts of the interview better, probably, if I hadn't spent so much time working on the talk. I wish I had been more prepared for my interview with the dean (who did not follow the scripts for dean interviews that I had read while trying to figure out what to expect! perhaps I should email him and point this out, you think?), but I don't think I did dreadfully there. It's easy to second-guess little things, though, especially when you spend the whole day talking to one person after another, or one group after another, all of whom are watching you closely.
5. I came home after my exit interview wondering if I could just climb into a nice dark closet and rock silently for a while, but instead I changed into different dress clothes and went out to dinner with a different set of search committee members. (I'd had dinner with the other half of the search committee on Tuesday night.) The food was good and there weren't any zinger questions lurking among the appetizers.
6. I think that I might be too tired to come up with seven whole takes tonight.
7. I think, in fact, that I might take a little nap on the couch while I wait for my 16yo to call for a ride home from the basketball game.
More quick takes at Jen's.
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