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I had worked for weeks on my first conference paper. I had received comments from multiple faculty members, and rehearsed it in front of friends. I had the slides perfectly lined up with the text, and had inserted just enough animations to emphasize my points, but not take away from the entire presentation. I felt ready. I was nervous. I was anxious. I spent the first three days of the conference worried about the presentation. What if no one liked it? What if my computer crashed? And then the time came, and I stood in front of a nearly empty room and gave my presentation.

Work doesn’t always look like work. Over the last week, I’ve had a couple of long, meandering conversations with professors as they’ve returned for the Spring. One was completely spontaneous, and the other was a focused discussion that quickly and thoroughly overran its purpose. They were the kinds of discussions that can only happen before the crush of classes gets fully under way -- deadlines aren’t looming yet, students aren’t hunting them yet, and everybody is still relatively well-rested. It’s a brief window.

What assumptions about our industry do you think need updating?

A comparison....

Our local school board, of which I am vice president, recently held an open town hall meeting. The meeting was very well attended and the individuals present represented a broad spectrum of local opinion.

I had intended to write this week's post about Patrick Witt. However, as I was sitting in my office on Friday, trying, on a brief break, to reconcile the newspaper reports with the very different story in his press release, a supervisee arrived for her scheduled session, sat down and burst into tears. "I can't do this anymore," she said.

What’s New at UVenus: Afshan Jafar for University of Venus at The Guardian UK with Consumerism in higher education: the...

Inside Higher Ed will be blogging live from the first national meeting of the New Faculty Majority.