Somewhere out there in the universe

Some thing about readers' reports that I am thinking may in fact be the case--

They always take too long to come back. Your manuscript's reports are taking for ever, way longer than you thought or anyone said. Yeah. That always happens. Ask around.

Some thing about readers' reports that is weird--

Somewhere, out in the universe, my book ms. is sitting on someone's desk or something, stressing them out because they were supposed to read it months ago but they didn't. Maybe sometimes they put their coffee or tea cup on the cover page and now it has a few stray stains. But I don't even know who these people are, and there's no way to tell. Where is the desk upon which the ms. is sitting stressing someone out? In a warm place? In a rainy place?

Maybe the person is not even stressed out about it. Hmm. A few times I have said to senior people that my readers' reports are months overdue, and the people said, 'Oh, that reminds me, I am supposed to read this ms. and the report was due months ago. I really should try to get to that soon.' But they did not sound at all stressed about this.

Actually did something (but did not get paid)

Hey, I actually did something for my new job. I was pretty excited about this. They asked me to do something professor-like; like, to evaluate something based on my expertise!

They asked the faculty email list to say which journal subscriptions the cash-strapped library should not cancel.

This required me to dig deep, really deep, into my extensive training, in order to say that no, our library should not cancel its subscription to Central European History.

I developed this process:

Ask self: Have you, or anyone you know, ever read, or felt like you/they ought to read, any article in any of the journals in question?

Example: Slavic Review--hmm, I think so-and-so had an issue of that kicking around his office--we better not cancel that one.

Task dispatched with aplomb!

In related news, recent nightmares include:

I'm in some seminar (as a participant) and a guy on the hiring committee walks in and sits in the back of the room. Then I realize that instead of pants, I'm wearing a bath towel.

I go into my first day of class and the students are so rowdy that I can't even say, "Hi, my name is..." and have to call security to have one particularly uncooperative girl dragged away. Oh, and I on top of it, I haven't finished writing the syllabus.