A short series of artfully staged photographs in which I am not wearing moose print pajamas

I know.  I'm a bad blogger.  Two weeks -- that's an eternity in the internet world.  What can I say?  It's reading season.  Reading season is when everything besides reading files (and skulking to the kitchen to bake a furtive batch of muffins) goes by the wayside.  I feel guilty checking e-mail.  I feel guilty walking the dog.  I feel guilty going grocery shopping.  Because none of that is reading, and therefore no longer necessary to my day to day existence.

I wanted to give you a glimpse into what I do all day, reading admission files from the comfort of my home, but since a more accurate picture would involve moose print pajama pants and a bedraggled Pittsburgh Panthers sweatshirt, you'll have to settle for the sanitized version.  

This is my kitchen table, where I spend approximately eight to ten hours a day parked in a chair reading essays, evaluating transcripts, and trying to restrain myself from writing comments in the margins.  Add a constant cup of tea, an ever-rotating gallery of snacks, and some non-distracting pleasant-tempoed harpsichord music, and you'll have a sense of the ambiance.  It's not bad, actually, especially if you toss in a pair of fuzzy slippers.  

And below is Louie, who can't figure out why, if I'm home anyway, we're not doing fun stuff like going for long rambles on the Thompson Creek Trail or barking at mailmen.  Harpsichord music does not please him one bit.

I'll be honest: while reading season's in full swing, I gripe about it.  The hours stink, and it's a seven-day-a-week commitment.  But if I had to pick, reading season would rank up there as one of my favorite parts of the admission cycle.  It's intellectually rigorous; I'm diving deep into applications, explicating recommendations, evaluating the nuances of "fit" with our crazy, quirky, challenging college.  Sometimes, yes, my opinion is influenced by quantifiable factors, like curriculum or scores.  But at its best, reading a student's application is like reading a story.  And I'm an English major.  I thrive on stories.  I'm learning about summer camp and cardboard forts and terrifying calculus teachers.  And that's great.

The hard part is remembering that the rest of the world has not magically gone into stasis; there are still e-mails to write and tour guides to hire and websites to update and publications to order.  And adding that on to a full day of reading -- well, there's a reason this blog post is going up after nine, with no immediate expectation of a completed workday.  

But I can deal.  Because I'm a professional.  And I'm wearing moose pants.