Six years and almost 2500 posts later, I’m still blogging.

The anniversary always comes around during the start of the academic year, when I’m too busy to post a lot. This year finds me the most burnt out I’ve ever been before and once again questioning my career choice of working in college housing.

But my 31st birthday is less than 2 weeks away. And Jeff and I will be celebrating the second anniversary of our first date in about a month. So, I’m content to continue the status quo.

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After I finished a call on my cellphone while laying on the couch, I noticed that Jeff had tied my shoe laces together. So of course I snapped a picture with my Treo and uploaded it to Flickr before pausing to untie them.

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The NY Times had an interesting article today about renaming and branding of colleges and universities, which focused on my current employer.

Unlike my friends and family, I had heard of the New School (and its interesting history) before applying to work here (I had to put up with lots of “The new school? What was the old school?” jokes). But like many of my colleagues, I usually called it “The New School” instead of “New School University,” because the latter was usually met with blank or confused stares (or people would ask me if we were part of NYU).

So I’m totally onboard with the name change (even if our former “Actor’s Studio” students are still fuming). What I am skeptical of is the new logo. To paraphase my Parsons students, “We have one of the top design programs in the country and we paid counsultants millions of dollars to design an orange spray paint stencil?” I understand that it’s supposed to be urban and edgy, but in execution on our new stationary it looks like the printer accidentally smudged the logo.

Here’s the laughable part of the article:

The idea at the New School, Mr. Kerrey said, is to unify the university’s disparate units, clarify its mission and project to potential students and donors what makes the place unusual. That, he said, and the fact that New School University is not particularly good English (emphasis added).

And “The New School, A University” is good English? The conflicting articles drive me crazy. And are we supposed to capitalize the “The” if it’s not at the beginning of a sentence or not? But we’re having a lot of fun with the comma — my colleagues and I pronounce it as if we were reading stage directions: “The New School… dramatic pause… a university.”
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The last school I worked for had also changed its name (from Northeast Missouri State University to Truman State University) a few years earlier to reflect its change in mission from a regional state school to the state’s premiere public liberal arts university. When I left (almost 10 years after the name change), we were still using up stationary, etc. with the old name. I imagine it’ll be the same at the New School.

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As Jeff wrote, I (we) need a vacation.

I started off the summer in my old dorm moving & setting up a new Hall Office and overseeing the installation of all-new electronic locks throughout the building. Then, right after moving to my new dorm (with Jeff), I unexpectantly had to host a bunch of high school students who overflowed from another dorm for a summer program (and check them in while the gay pride parade marched past my door).

I don’t have an office in my new dorm right now because the university is renovating the street-level commercial space off the lobby to be the new TV/Study lounge and office for the building. The old office and lounge upstairs were turned back to student rooms, but the new space won’t be ready until the day before (or possibly the day after) all the freshmen move in on August 25.

Last week, a decision was made to replace a large amount of the furniture in my dorm with pieces that would have been disposed of from another dorm that is getting all-new furniture. I’ve been up to 2am several nights tagging desks and dressers to be moved and/or disposed of and getting up at 7 or 8am to meet the movers from the Facilities department.

I’m burnt out and feeling a little resentful that everyone else in my department has gotten to go on vacation this summer — and now that RA training starts next week, it’ll be early October before I’m free to use some of my 41 (and accumulating) vacation days. It’s really no ones fault — it’s just bad luck and bad timing of summer projects. I keep trying to remind myself that all my hard work is for the benefit of my students.

What’s really a bummer is that I haven’t gotten to spent much time with Jeff lately. We’re still living out of boxes in our new apartment. And I’m getting a little snippy with him as job stress overflows into other aspects of my life.

This isn’t what I imagined our moving in together would be like.

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