The life of the academic

Don't let any one tell you the life of the academic is for the faint of heart. Not only are you never sure exactly where you are going to be in 6 months, or a year, or 5 years, but you also go through stages where everyone wants everything from you all at once or at least a bunch of stuff you might be working on all comes to a head all at the same time. Unfortunately, you never see it coming, even if you are super organized like I am, it just sort of happens and all of a sudden you are buried under, at least in my case: my THESIS, two conference papers I am giving in the next two months, job applications, research proposals, abstracts, book reviews, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Afterall, I did sign up for this and well, it's all a part of the game. I'm just thankful I'm not teaching this semester or I would be a disaster. Unfortunately, this means I have been living in Germany for two weeks now but have not really seen anything other than my office and my flat. It's probably good that there aren't really people around at the moment as well, as it means that I have nothing better to do than work in my office all day and am getting tons of work done. I've pretty much got my life set up here, bank accounts, phone, etc. but I fear that the next 3 months are going to go by like crazy. I'm not speaking German nearly as much as I hoped, but I guess I have other things to concentrate on at the moment. At least all this craziness keeps me out of trouble ;)

I'm heading back to the UK for a weekend to help with orientation and get some admin stuff done. I look forward to the visit but it will be weird as most of my friends have all moved away and I will be in the department with all the new postgrads all of whom I will not know nor will there be time for them to get to know me. I guess it's the end of an era and time to move on. From there, I head straight to Prague to meet my parents. I'm looking forward to another adventure and a chance to see a little more of Europe before I head back to Canada. Their visit will also give me a chance to see some of Germany that I probably won't have time to see. I'm looking forward to a little holiday but will probably have to do some work in there as well.

Well, that's all for now. I figure I should at least try to update this a little more regularly than I have in the past but unfortunately, that probably means more discussions of the joys of my office rather than anything exciting...