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Finally, summer is around the corner. I have flowers, in bloom and in bud, taking over my front garden. And a three-day weekend to boot! (Thank you, Queen Victoria!)

My colleague, Dr. Andrew Smith, asks if open plan offices are good for academics?

My gut response is no, having spent some time as a grad student working in a library that was literally open to almost an entire building. Let’s just say that I had to think about how revealing my short skirts might be to people in the first floor reading room since there was pretty much nothing but glass or wire caging between me and the wide, wide world of the Pratt Library.

Being on view is only part of it. I try to work with an open door policy since I feel that it’s important for academics to be seen on campus. But it is very distracting (even more so when students walk down the hall, deeply engaged in one-sided cell phone conversations!).

Like many other historians, most of my research is solitary or done closely with one individual. Chattering away in a roomful of people would be very distracting when I’m trying to decipher faded handwriting or work out the archaic spelling of a seventeenth century book. I also have enough books on the shelves to sink a ship (or at least to pull down any of that typical flimsy “office divider” construction).

Even more so, my concern is with students coming into the office to speak with their professor. Open-plan offices would have to provide many private conference rooms to meet with students and I fear that would still be off-putting.

So universities of the future or those in the present seeking to remodel, giving up on faculty offices isn’t a good thing!

Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! — Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

We transplanted and planted lots today: now we have a raised bed at the front of our house populated by five winter-hardy shrub rose varietals: Hansa, Morden Centennial, Champlain, John Cabot and Martin Frobisher.

Why, yes, we both are quite fond of historical explorer references and would have included Henry Hudson had that been available at our nursery. We count Hansa as an honourary historical reference (Hanseatic League) and Morden Centennial has a historically minded name so it’s all good.

Of course, youngest thinks this will be better when they actually bloom!

As with many academics, my boundaries between work and not-work are rather porous. One daughter has said that she definitely doesn’t want to be an academic because she sees how I’m always bringing work home and even if, like today, I’m not 100% focused on the job, I’ve still put in more than an hour and a half in on work today when I, technically, am not on duty.

There are sixteen weeks until the fall 2010 term is underway. Fifteen if I count the week before which will be crammed with meetings and is also when I’ll have to have my syllabi complete and online course components (new platform is supposedly coming into play this summer — do teaching faculty even get to know what platform and iteration, no!) all in place.

I’m balancing teaching prep with article and chapter writing, editorial duties, writing and presenting (hopefully) a conference paper along with all the various other administrative and service duties that crop up during the summer and cramming all of that into the season begins to be worrisome. Especially given how short-term some of the notices are for some things at the U (a week’s notice to get a department committee to identify and make a case for university-wide scholarship competition? Oh boy!) and how up-in-the-air we are over vital personnel issues.

Now, do that and still make time for vacation? Real vacation time that my kids recognize that mom is not working but simply spending time with them? Real vacation in order to give my body time to rest and recharge (so that hopefully I don’t have a repeat of last year’s disastrous viral arthritis). That’s the real challenge, isn’t it? Over at ProfHacker they’re tackling some of the logistical elements of summer planning but the difficult part of figuring out what can best be done when and how much space to leave for the inevitable crises while still protecting some family time? That’s the tough question.

The several inches of snow outside contributed to my resolution to not go anywhere. News of a fatal road accident at an intersection we regularly pass through only confirmed that resolution.

Today I’ve done bugger all (excepting dealing with a few loads of laundry, feeding family members, obsessively polishing the stove and other mundane chores). I’ve listened to several hours of music while reading a densely thought-provoking work of comparative media history: Always Already New.

Dang. Some of that actually sounds productive and even possibly work-related. I’ll fix that: maybe this evening I’ll watch some mindless TV!

Ordered in June of 1998: Ms. Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia. (I’m not counting the gifts I had sent to others in 1997 when I was testing the service out).

Still, a very awesome book!