Evaluations

The STACS program committee meeting has ended. We have a couple of days to digest the results before they get sent out to authors. The way in which the committee virtual meeting was run was an impressive case of efficiency. We were given internal deadlines that we were actually supposed to respect, with no slack. That was stressful!

The life of a professor is very much driven by deadlines. The next item: recommendation letters that need to be written and sent out, many of them before December 1. A few days later, several referee reports are due. Then, wrapping up the semester's courses and deciding on final grades. Some of the intervals in between will be filled by attempts to bring my mailbox under control.

So much of our lives is occupied by evaluations. It is rather striking considering that that is neither teaching nor research proper.