As some of you know, I have been visiting away this year. First, Cornell. Then, W&L. Now I am packing to go off to Tulane (for good).
I have thought a lot about blogging about the visiting process. This was an amazing year, and I am grateful for having had the chance to visit away. I never really blogged about visiting, however, b/c my sense is that it is a bit of a delicate subject in the minds of some faculty members.
Had I blogged about visiting, I would have positively raved about it. It is a fascinating, eye-opening experience, that is edifying and exciting. But for the moving aspect. Having to pack, move, unpack, pack, move, unpack, repeat is exhausting, and I have twice lost my coffeemaker. I am not making that up. When I moved to Cornell from Richmond, I somehow lost my coffeemaker, so I bought a new one. When I left Cornell and moved to W&L, I packed the coffeemaker and shipped it to W&L. I *know* I did. But, when I got to Lexington, I couldn’t find the coffeemaker in any of my household boxes. I *knew* I packed it, though, so I refused to buy another one. After weeks of searching for the coffeemaker, I just got into the routine of walking Maggie-the-border-collie to Lexington Coffee each morning so I could pick up a cup of joe. I gave up on my coffeemaker.
So here I sit, alone on a Friday night, packing my last few boxes in my W&L office, to ship off to Tulane. On the bookshelf in my office is a lone box from Cornell, never opened. I never opened it when I got to W&L, because I knew it contained my Adelphia materials, my Tyco files, and a bunch of reprints. There was nothing I needed in there for this past spring term. As I moved the box over to the “ship to Tulane” pile, however, I noticed that the Tyco/Adelphia box smelled a bit… musty. I figured something must have spilled on it at some point in transit. So I opened the box.
In it, I found my files on Adelphia and my files on Tyco. I also found a stack of old reprints. And, beneath all of that, I found the coffeemaker, in its now musty-smelling spendor. Score.
