Thursday

Ok, so I have 9, 7, and 10 hour days this week. Let's see how Th will stack up.

8-9. Research and writing at home.

10-11. More of the same. Some blogging.

That's three hours.

11:45-2. Lunch with candidate, misc. / meet with candidate. two more hours.

2-2:30. Lorca

4-5: Candidate's talk.

So I will do a 6-hour day today.

So: 9 / 7 / 10 / 6 1/2 = 32 1/2. I will probably work an average of three hours a day on Friday, Sat, Sunday, for a grand total of 41.5. With a time range between 3 and 10 hours a day.

I will have gotten a lot of writing done, fulfilled my service as member of lecture and graduate committees, taking my responsibility seriously to evaluate job candidates; taught my theory very well; graded a full set of undergraduate papers and taught that class well too. So, yes, I think 40 hours is about right. The theory course is three hours, and takes more than three hours to prepare, even if I am teaching texts I have taught before.

***

Every day we get a KU today email, and I think another one too, of KU news. Then there are other messages from the provost or chancellor of absolutely no content except the soothing but not really soothing sort of "we have a mission and are trying to be excellent." We cannot block those. Multiply that by every working day, and every employee of the university. Even if it only takes a three second to see what the email is, evaluate whether it is important, and delete it. So that is hours and hours of time over the course of a year. Now divide those hours by the average hourly rate. The emails seem relatively inexpensive to send. Just the salary of the person who compiles them every day and some overhead costs. But the cost of reading them is enormous. Also, it is not cost free from an informational perspective, since any really vital information will be lost in the swill of mere information.