exam week...

Caught the early train today, which means an extra 15 minutes of quiet office time this morning. For some reason, I actually feel like grading today... there is a manageable pile of stuff I could get through, and since I don't have any lecture planning to do this week what with exams and all, I figure... might was well jump on some of it now and leave my Spring Break open for grading the EXAMS, which will take a while.

I still have to write 2 out of my 3 exams, but for some reason that doesn't seem as urgent as it probably should.

All in all, I feel good about the next couple of weeks, and NOT overwhelmed for a change. I've actually been doing some semi-recreational reading, which for me means - the same kinds of nerdy-science books I'm always reading, only I'm not reading these to plan for any particular class I have to teach. I even updated the reading list in my sidebar for the first time in months - that shows you how much spare time I have right there.

Haven't worked much on my book chapter... nothing concrete anyway. I'm doing that back-of-the-head writing, though... organizing the piece, imagining topic sentences and transitions. (This is work best done in the shower.) At some point this week, I should start doing little bursts of actual writing, though... get a couple thousand words OUTSIDE of my head.

I submitted a conference abstract this weekend. It's for the American Association of Physics Teachers conference over the summer. It's in Syracuse, which is fairly drive-to-able, so if I get accepted I won't need to beg for very much money from my university in order to attend. I really have no desire to GO to an AAPT conference at this point in my life, but the CV padding is pretty important. Plus, contributed talks at this conference are only 8 minutes, so... it would involve ZERO work. Which isn't to say it isn't an interesting and useful and important paper I'm contributing... I think it is. It's just a question of... putting this out there at this particular time has more to do with my pending contract review than it does with any desire to disseminate this important educational work.

Anyway, this is all just boring work crap that is scarcely worth writing about. Maybe I'll some back with something a little more "fun" later. That's me.... "Doctor Fun".