Highs and lows..

Today has been alternately wonderful and frustrating.

Our NCA accreditation team is visiting this week, so campus is all abuzz and there are lots of extra meetings and people wandering about and last minute requests. This, however, is really neither here nor there as it was more or less expected and most of the meetings and requests don't really involve me. However, it did give me the final push I needed to get the ABC prints Jack got me for the holidays hung in my office. They're hung on the wall to my right, just by the door, so I can see them out of the corner of my eye all the time when I'm working at my desk and they make me smile. I like the color they add to the wall and the fun the bring to the office.

Today is also the due date for the US News surveys. These are easier this year than they were last year because I knew they were coming and what to expect and had the foresight to complete the Common Data Set in October. Unfortunately, there are *always* things on the US News survey that aren't in the CDS that require additional running around and tracking down and updating. Which wouldn't be so bad if people would actually, oh, I don't know, respond to data requests anywhere near on time.

(It seems that if I'm a couple days late on getting a request completed it's okay for them to badger me endlessly, but if I'm asking them for data, a simple reminder a week after I asked for the data (which itself was at least 10-14 days after they got the initial request) is completely unreasonable and can't I just go sit in a corner until they feel like getting back to me on their own? And I won't even get started on the rant about "Oh, so and so sent you that already." when I haven't received anything and then a grump about how inconvenient it is for them to have to track down the "copy" they kept - which is really the original form, complete with my original signature, that they just bothered to go find and complete this afternoon. After my second reminder that I still hadn't received their data.)

So here it is, 4:15 on the day the survey is due and I'm still waiting for people to get me the information I need to complete it. Yup. Information that I know each factors at least 5% in our ranking. And then they'll wonder when our ranking comes out wonky. *sigh*

But, on the up side, I've been selected as an AIR Summer Data Policy Institute Fellow for this summer, which is kind of neat.

Then again, there's a town-&-gown discussion tonight that I need to be at that doesn't start until 6:30, so I'm sort of stuck here until then (with a 30-minute commute, going home before something like that is a bit ridiculous).