Misc morning and mid-day mentoring

Today I came into work because I agreed to be a mentor to our new speech adjunct at the college and today was the mentor kick-offf session. I actually started my correspondence with them before school started. Typically this is the time when there are alot of questions and a new instructor can be easily overwhelmed. We talked about textbook choices, I shared my syllabus, and walked them over to tech support when their computer passwords were not working (this happened to both of them). I sat with them during duty days and introduced them to Matt, our Division chair, to Darin are media specialist/equipment organizer, to Deb the faculty secretary. I made sure they had the copy code for the speech department and informed them of the blanket purchase order in the bookstore for supplies. We walked to their office (they're not only sharing an office but even the desk) so we knew what items were there--then helped them find what they're phone number would be and when they'd get a computer. I felt bad for other new instructors who did not have a mentor before school started. As it was, I felt the speech adjuncts were rushed, and I was happy to help in whatever ways I could because afterall, we've all been there.

Since I had to come into town for the mentoring meeting scheduled for the afternoon I ended up coming into school for the whole day. This allowed me to work on some miscellaneous items in my office. First on the agenda was to try and clean out some of the misc email I had accumulated over the last year. Each year it seems there are more and more messages coming my way electronically. Some are for meetings, some are from students, some from my concurrent partner, others from colleagues, some from the textbook companies, and some are regarding school news which I always think I'll eventually have time to read but never do. Some of them need to be filed, some need a response and many can be deleted. I'm embarrased to say at the start of this school year I had over 850 email. I've slowly tried to deal with some of them, but it takes alot ot time. So this morning I picked away at the email and got it down to 430. One more morning like that and I'll be in good shape.

I also created a new quiz for my interpersonal class titled "Direct vs Indirect Blog Language" and it is tied to my blog entry for September 15, 2008 "A Day in the Life of Cycles". It's all set to go in D2L. My blogging is becoming more beneficial than I first realized--so that's fun.

So it was another day of working over 8 hours--am I really on sabbatical?