Right. So, I’m the president of my department’s graduate student association. I have various duties in regards to this post, but the biggest of my duties is likely the organizing of the student run activities that go on in association with the Open House for Prospective Graduate Students. I’ve organized places for people to stay. I’ve planned fun “get to know Buffalo (and the other graduate students in the department)” activities. The weekend, I think, has gone pretty well. There have been seven extra people around checking things out (by things I mean the graduate program to which I currently belong) and keeping track of where these seven people are and how they’re getting where they need to go (in case their hosts don’t have cars or have some other time commitment) is tiring. Oh so very tiring.
But, the fun didn’t stop there. There are old and sketchy windows in my bedroom that are due to be replaced. And, my landlord informed me on Wednesday that they were on the schedule to be replaced. On Friday. Seriously. So, I figure, that’s okay. I won’t be home to let them in, but I can let them know they’ll have to let themselves in. I would lock my cats in the bathroom, which is sort of a big deal but it would need to be done.
The prospective students started arriving around 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon. This was a good 3 hours earlier than I expected and threw a bit of a wrench into the works. Of course, no one would be home then to actually take care of letting the student in and what not. Now, I could have sent the kid to campus, that was an option, but that brought up further complications because people would be in class and someone would still have to be around to meet them (because I wasn’t going to make the department secretaries entertain him. I need them to continue liking me.) So, he came and sat on my couch and watched Harry Potter while I finished up some laundry.
A few hours later his hosts picked him up and I had a few hours of quiet before I had to go collect my own prospective student, a young man from Tennessee who was an excellent house guest.
The weekend went, more or less, without a hitch. On Friday we had a brief misunderstanding about how one of the prospective students was going to get to campus and the art museum/bar evening event we had scheduled and there was an incident involving slippage and the ice that caused us to end an afternoon of winter games early in favor of Buffalo wings and being indoors. The weekend was just looong… and, I’m still playing catch up. (Case in point…I started this post on Sunday and I’m just finishing it now.)
