This Wednesday began just like any other weekday. At home, at 7 a.m., I checked my calendar and answered emails from the day before. At 7:45 a.m., I left with my 2-year-old son and 2-month-old daughter for my son’s daycare. My daughter has come to work with me since she was 4 weeks old because we could not afford for my wife to be away from work any more. By 8:15 a.m., my office manager was knocking on my door, as she usually does, so we could discuss departmental matters and authorize payment on our daily stack of invoices.

 

My daughter and I walked over to the library for an 8:30 a.m. committee meeting with a group of staff, faculty and administrators. We discussed a broad range of issues that affect the overall university environment and culture. This meeting ended just before 10 a.m. and I walked to a meeting with the chair of our Integrated Liberal Studies Oversight Committee (ILSOC) so we could design and create a new website for our ILS (general education) program.

 

From 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., I held six 15-minute, scheduled, bi-weekly meetings with students from my second semester organic chemistry class. At 12:30 p.m., a student came by to complain about the instruction she was receiving in her course. Since she was not the first student to complain about this instructor, we talked for more than an hour about solutions and decided that we should and could move her to another section. She left about 1:40 p.m., pleased that I had not dismissed her concerns and had actually corrected the situation for her. Through many meetings with many people over some days, a plan has been put into place to improve the instruction in this class for this semester; the instructor will not be teaching the course in the future.

 

During a spare 20 minutes, we went to the campus store to get a soda and a pack of crackers for lunch. From 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., students with advising questions and faculty with other issues stopped by. From 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., four more students from organic chemistry came by for their bi-weekly meetings.

 

At 4 p.m., I went to my bi-weekly meeting of ILSOC. As chair of the Writing-Intensive Subcommittee, I reported on the subcommittee’s efforts to help faculty transform their courses into writing-intensive courses.

 

After the ILSOC meeting I returned to my office to prepare for my 6 p.m. class. After class, I met with students from 7:15 p.m. to 7:45 p.m.

 

My son met me at our door at 8 p.m. We read and played for 30 to 45 minutes, and then I put him to bed. My wife and I talked as I prepared dinner, and I then sat down to grade and prepare. By the end of the late-night news, I was ready to stop thinking about work and watch a little late-night television before heading to bed.