University/college has been underway for a few weeks, if not longer. Students are settling into their classes, doing their reading, and looking at the assignments that aren’t due yet.
Some of us are waiting for the internal processes to work through the delays and allow the long-awaited project to proceed.
Waiting is terrible.
As is the amount of work that awaits on the other side of the decision.
I have found that academia is like that.
It moves at a slow deliberate pace until a decision is made. Often this period of waiting has the student on tenterhooks as they await the decision. This feeling is agonizing.
And then the decision is made.
Then it’s off to the races. Have to get the project done in time to start the waiting game anew.
It’s a little exhausting.
Okay, a lot exhausting.
Playing the waiting game with yourself as you, well, wait.
There is nothing else to do but wait.
And, often, wait some more.
This is the time to make plans and also to make headway into the other projects.
The projects for other classes that are waiting on you.
The decision will be made, for good or ill.
Sometimes the decision events in chucking the entire project as planned and going in another direction.
Good thing academia is also patient.
They have to be.
They also know that academia processes move slowly.
Until it doesn’t.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 