Take Your Kid to Work Day 3/4

Jack was the only kid this summer who actually had to work when he came to my office with me.

Before we even got to my office, I made him attend a talk I gave to parents of incoming freshmen, and then we really went to work.

First I made him help me open all the textbook boxes and count them (one time, I waited until the day of my meetings and found boxes of music textbooks, and it was horrifying).   Then, I made him open all of the supplemental CD boxes and remove a disc.

Then we had lunch because I am not a monster.

After lunch, I thought we would be almost done.  We had a pleasant half hour or so on our own screens while I did some TA hiring and enrolled all of the kids in school.

My last task was to assemble the TA binders for training at the end of the month.  I have always had Harry help me in the past, but Jack was so sweet and happy to assist that I figured what the hell?

That was when I discovered that the 1000+ pages of copies for the binders weren't sorted in the machine, so I had to sort them manually or place then page by page in 35 binders.  I thought about asking the person who made the copies to please make them again and sort them.  I thought about chucking the separate colors, assembling one complete binder's worth of materials and running 35 quick copies on white paper. I thought about just handing out the binders empty and passing out the papers at the meeting.  I thought about putting together a binder PDF instead and telling the staff that we are going paperless.

In the end, most of these options led to too much paper waste for me to handle, so Jack and I spread the binders out all over the hallway outside my office and filled them up.  For 3.5 hours.  I could not deal with a 60+ page document of supplemental activities that had been honed by the staff each year and is really valuable.  I am going to PDF that one and also distribute the actual printed pages in the meeting.  35 people putting them in their own binders will go much faster.

Always time for a BUCKY!

 End of a long, fun day!