I’m working this morning on-campus on a book chapter about placement issues in special education. Why, since I’m an historian? Because a former colleague at Vanderbilt, Doug Fuchs, invited me to help write a chapter, and I’m a nice guy (and maybe taking on a slight overload of work is a useful way to avoid boredom). I’m using a digital voice recorder and dictation software to draft pieces of it (which is fine for how I’m thinking, in pieces, today) and going outside to talk for five minutes, inside to set up my desktop to transcribe while I go outside again to talk for … you get the idea. The day is sunny, 65 F., and its being a Saturday means I can sit almost anywhere without being interrupted by others (or having that noise interfere with dictation) helps. I just wish my desktop were a bit faster in transcribing, but that’s the consequence of having a relatively cheap desktop that’s almost 2 years old. (Don’t ask how old our home computer is!)<\/p>\n
I also have about a foot-thick stack of student work to go through this weekend. I put most of that off while reading through the draft papers that approximately half of my students turned in at the beginning of the month, before spring break. Then I visited my parents with my son, so I didn’t have nearly enough time to read through them while traveling, and played catch-up after getting back here. Being a faculty member is a balancing act.<\/p>\n