Stare therapy

Are you staring out the window? Stop that! Stop it right now! Okay, I agree, the view looks like a page ripped from a calendar called Winter Wonderland, but that doesn't justify your sitting there staring. There's work to be done. Paperwork! Classwork! Reading research writing work!

Okay, I grant that you've been working really hard lately. Yes, that quadrennial program review was a real pain to revise, but you submitted that last Friday and you should have gotten your fill of staring out the window over the weekend. That's what weekends are for, especially snowy weekends when the winter birds are paying frequent visits to the feeders. But in case you haven't noticed, the weekend is over. This is Monday! Nobody is allowed to stare out the window on Monday!

Yes, the snow looks nice and fresh and innocent, but as you were just telling your students during the discussion of "Daisy Miller" this morning, innocence is not always an entirely admirable trait. I know you put a lot of energy into preparing for and teaching that class, and I know you've put more into preparing tomorrow's classes, but that doesn't mean it's time to slack off. You've got some momentum; let's keep it rolling! Stop staring!

I know your eyeballs hurt and your brain needs a break; I know about the 472 e-mail messages and the tax forms and the FAFSA and all the little boxes that need to have the right numbers put into them and how difficult it can be to find those numbers and how frustrating it is when they don't add up. I know about the meeting with the Powers That Be and the mock-up of next year's course schedule that you threw together Friday afternoon after everyone else in the department had gone home, and I know how anxiety about the schedule and the meeting interfered with your sleep all weekend. Now that today's classes are done and tomorrow's are prepared, I know you'd like nothing better than to sit and stare the afternoon away, preferably in a quiet room with the lights off and the door shut. But you can't, okay? That's not the way we do things around here. As your pal Daisy Miller learned, it's dangerous to defy convention. Department chairs who goof off in their offices may not die of malaria, but they're certain to suffer somehow. The PTB's won't like to see you staring out your office window. So stop staring.

Or if you can't stop, maybe you'd better just shut the door.