If that person is me: I have to read everything! That's no big discovery, but as I wade through my files and piles (and my history), I read things I've written (some good!), things I meant to read and discard (some old news, some stuff I should have known), things I meant to give to students or colleagues.
Here's a partial list:
-- the raw data (completed surveys) from a research project I did in 1996 with two colleagues from grad school (we queried a large number of medical professionals from Central Asia and Eastern Europe who were partnering with hospitals in the U.S. through an organization called the American International Health Alliance)
-- the PowerPoint-generated transparencies we used at our presentation of that research to the AIHA's 1997 meeting in Atlanta
-- notes and handouts and notepads and receipts from many, many conference presentations (in New York, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Bloomington, Bemidji, Chicago, Houston)
-- doodled-on and cryptic-note-filled agendas from many, many meetings: departments (English and Women & Gender Studies), all-college, "duty days," elearning committee, assessment committee, Women of Distinction committee, AASC, union, Q&S Club, college-readiness project, discipline workshops, and more
-- college-generated announcements for the last three years (everything from calendars to phone operating instructions)
-- textbook catalogs for composition, literature, technical writing, women's studies, gender studies, sexuality studies, basic writing, developmental writing, business writing, film studies, Hispanic studies, rhetoric (these all got recycled)
-- final exams from six-years-worth of giving them in courses at Century
-- student portfolios - at least fifty - from students who haven't ever picked them up (although they said they would)
-- newspaper clippings and newspapers and newsletters
-- forms (for grade changes, sick leave, reimbursement, purchases)
Oh, I give up: this list is so boring and incomplete. Let's just say that I've read a LOT of information lately, re-filed some of it, and tossed (make that recycled) much of it. This last is hard for me because I also like the materiality of paper (once upon a time, I had a card-making business), and I'll save stuff just for the texture/color/weight/cotton content.
But a purge is good, a purge is good, a purge is good. Yep.
Evacuation roots
5 hours ago
1 comment:
Man, I do this, too. I throw out old shoes and lace and lampshades easily but those paper bits--oi! I wrote a story about a woman who kept scraps of all her papers in shoeboxes under her bed and when she couldn't sleep at night she'd pull them out and sort through them. . . Maybe I'll rename her Julie.
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