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Oct. 13th, 2017 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dchenesThe site visit ended yesterday morning. We expect to continue being accredited, although the official report won't be out until January. The site visitors' verbal report gave the predoc program no citations and two commendations (which won't appear in the January report; that only lists what, if anything, we did wrong). As I am the predoc curriculum coordinator, I don't care so much about the postdoc programs, but only one of the six got a citation and we're getting a grace period to fix it.
On Monday, in the rain, three of us spent five hours taking all the binders, office supplies, shredder, exhibit table linens, baskets of snacks, cases of bottled water, copies of the self-study documents, easels, and "HSDM Welcomes CODA" signs over to the library. Fortunately we had the use of a car, because rain does not improve cardboard boxes full of binders full of paper. It took two carloads. The time-consuming part was getting everything off the second floor of an elevatorless building and then getting it out of the car and into the library. Heart attack #1 was when we came with the second carload and the security guard at the library had locked the doors and disappeared. He'd only gone to the bathroom, fortunately, but I had a nasty moment of contingency planning involving the idea of being at the library at 4:00 on Tuesday morning.
On Tuesday morning my chauffeur appeared at 6:00, which was ten minutes early. I had decided to hell with taking the bus, and hired private cars for myself for the site visit days. I got to the library at 6:15 and waited about fifteen minutes, at which point Tuesday heart attack #1 occurred when the caterer appeared with no coffee. I didn't know we had gotten the Harvard caterers to do coffee. They showed up two minutes later. The site visitors showed up early, at about 7:45, and it was on. I was merrily checking things off my security blanket list when my boss texted me a picture of the schedule for Wednesday morning and said the site visitors wanted the basic science disciplines added to the directors' names, and I should use her laptop to do it. Having done it, I had to bring the laptop back to the office to print 18 new 16-page schedules. I did that and brought them and the laptop back to the library. The site visit chair wanted his schedule hole-punched. The hole punch at the library circulation desk didn't like me, and ruined the document. That was when I got heart attack #2; I discovered I had revised the wrong version of the schedule, so I had to go back to the office again, find the right schedule, update it, print another 18 copies, hole-punch one, and bring them all back again. I finally ate a leftover breakfast burrito at 11:30.
Heart attack #3 held off until 4:00, when the site visit chair asked me to revise something else on his copy of the schedule, and by the way, to pick a restaurant and make a reservation for 16 people at 7:00. Eastern Standard couldn't do it, and Deuxave took 20 minutes to call us back, but they said they could. Then the site visitors opted for proximity to hotel over cuisine and decided to go to Yard House instead, so we canceled Deuxave.
I stayed at work until 9:15 that night because the site visitors had decided we didn't have sufficient grading rubrics for the reflection papers involving ethics, behavioral and social sciences, and externship experience. And they weren't sure they liked our rubrics for clinical procedures either ("adequate working length" was not an adequate description; they wanted things like "2 mm working length".) So we started rewriting them, because our opportunity to explain and defend ourselves was coming at 7:30 Wednesday morning. I got home at 10:15, went to bed at 11:00, and my brain went "Hi there! Awake now!" at 2:00. None of my usual tricks for getting back to sleep worked, but I dozed off and on until the alarm went off at 5:45.
Back to work again at 6:15, and found the library locked. The security guard and the caterer showed up at 6:45. At least I got to hang around in the fresh air for half an hour. My boss, who was supposed to be in the 8:30 curriculum review session with us, went into a 7:30 rubric explanation session (having texted me at 7:00 to go find some tertiary data in one of our massive binders) and didn't come out until 8:40 or so, thereby giving me Wednesday heart attack #1. I did have to answer some questions in the curriculum session, but they didn't ask me anything I couldn't answer. I got my leftover breakfast burrito at 11:00 and ate it with one hand while revising oral surgery and oral radiology rubrics for the afternoon sessions with the other.
The site visit chair asked at 1:30 for reservations for eight people at a seafood restaurant for 7:30, so we sent them to Legal Harborside for 8:00 (best we could do). The six postdoc program site visitors were done at lunchtime, so we sent them off to the airport. Some of the predoc site visitors went off to an externship site and got back later than intended, which put the afternoon all out of kilter, but we got done sometime around 4:30. The ODE faculty went out for drinks and invited the logistics team (including me), but I was too frazzled. I absconded with a lot of leftover salad from lunch because I hadn't seen a vegetable in two days, got home at 6:00, ate two large bowls of salad, fed the cats and went to bed at 9:30. Except for waking up at 2:00 because I was cold, I actually slept.
Yesterday was positively tranquil. The site visitors wrote reports for two hours in the morning, read them to the deans and dept heads at 10:15, and left at 10:40 or so. We helped ourselves to leftover breakfast, cleaned that up, took all the binders, table linens and snacks back to the office, and went out for about three hours of liquid lunch followed by cupcakes and champagne at teatime. And then I went home. And here I am. I've taken myself out for breakfast and now it's massage time.
On Monday, in the rain, three of us spent five hours taking all the binders, office supplies, shredder, exhibit table linens, baskets of snacks, cases of bottled water, copies of the self-study documents, easels, and "HSDM Welcomes CODA" signs over to the library. Fortunately we had the use of a car, because rain does not improve cardboard boxes full of binders full of paper. It took two carloads. The time-consuming part was getting everything off the second floor of an elevatorless building and then getting it out of the car and into the library. Heart attack #1 was when we came with the second carload and the security guard at the library had locked the doors and disappeared. He'd only gone to the bathroom, fortunately, but I had a nasty moment of contingency planning involving the idea of being at the library at 4:00 on Tuesday morning.
On Tuesday morning my chauffeur appeared at 6:00, which was ten minutes early. I had decided to hell with taking the bus, and hired private cars for myself for the site visit days. I got to the library at 6:15 and waited about fifteen minutes, at which point Tuesday heart attack #1 occurred when the caterer appeared with no coffee. I didn't know we had gotten the Harvard caterers to do coffee. They showed up two minutes later. The site visitors showed up early, at about 7:45, and it was on. I was merrily checking things off my security blanket list when my boss texted me a picture of the schedule for Wednesday morning and said the site visitors wanted the basic science disciplines added to the directors' names, and I should use her laptop to do it. Having done it, I had to bring the laptop back to the office to print 18 new 16-page schedules. I did that and brought them and the laptop back to the library. The site visit chair wanted his schedule hole-punched. The hole punch at the library circulation desk didn't like me, and ruined the document. That was when I got heart attack #2; I discovered I had revised the wrong version of the schedule, so I had to go back to the office again, find the right schedule, update it, print another 18 copies, hole-punch one, and bring them all back again. I finally ate a leftover breakfast burrito at 11:30.
Heart attack #3 held off until 4:00, when the site visit chair asked me to revise something else on his copy of the schedule, and by the way, to pick a restaurant and make a reservation for 16 people at 7:00. Eastern Standard couldn't do it, and Deuxave took 20 minutes to call us back, but they said they could. Then the site visitors opted for proximity to hotel over cuisine and decided to go to Yard House instead, so we canceled Deuxave.
I stayed at work until 9:15 that night because the site visitors had decided we didn't have sufficient grading rubrics for the reflection papers involving ethics, behavioral and social sciences, and externship experience. And they weren't sure they liked our rubrics for clinical procedures either ("adequate working length" was not an adequate description; they wanted things like "2 mm working length".) So we started rewriting them, because our opportunity to explain and defend ourselves was coming at 7:30 Wednesday morning. I got home at 10:15, went to bed at 11:00, and my brain went "Hi there! Awake now!" at 2:00. None of my usual tricks for getting back to sleep worked, but I dozed off and on until the alarm went off at 5:45.
Back to work again at 6:15, and found the library locked. The security guard and the caterer showed up at 6:45. At least I got to hang around in the fresh air for half an hour. My boss, who was supposed to be in the 8:30 curriculum review session with us, went into a 7:30 rubric explanation session (having texted me at 7:00 to go find some tertiary data in one of our massive binders) and didn't come out until 8:40 or so, thereby giving me Wednesday heart attack #1. I did have to answer some questions in the curriculum session, but they didn't ask me anything I couldn't answer. I got my leftover breakfast burrito at 11:00 and ate it with one hand while revising oral surgery and oral radiology rubrics for the afternoon sessions with the other.
The site visit chair asked at 1:30 for reservations for eight people at a seafood restaurant for 7:30, so we sent them to Legal Harborside for 8:00 (best we could do). The six postdoc program site visitors were done at lunchtime, so we sent them off to the airport. Some of the predoc site visitors went off to an externship site and got back later than intended, which put the afternoon all out of kilter, but we got done sometime around 4:30. The ODE faculty went out for drinks and invited the logistics team (including me), but I was too frazzled. I absconded with a lot of leftover salad from lunch because I hadn't seen a vegetable in two days, got home at 6:00, ate two large bowls of salad, fed the cats and went to bed at 9:30. Except for waking up at 2:00 because I was cold, I actually slept.
Yesterday was positively tranquil. The site visitors wrote reports for two hours in the morning, read them to the deans and dept heads at 10:15, and left at 10:40 or so. We helped ourselves to leftover breakfast, cleaned that up, took all the binders, table linens and snacks back to the office, and went out for about three hours of liquid lunch followed by cupcakes and champagne at teatime. And then I went home. And here I am. I've taken myself out for breakfast and now it's massage time.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-14 04:38 pm (UTC)