musings on meetings

Today is the big day that we get to sit down with the Dean and talk about space in the new building. The meeting has been postponed twice, so I am anxious to get it over with and start to nail down a plan for moving. Unfortunately, the move is going to happen right in the middle of when I will be making revisions to one grant and co-writing another. The whole thing has potential disaster written all over it, but it will be nice to get it done. Only so long I can shrivel in this crappy building with virtually no windows.
What is fairly amazing to me, however, is the amount of time spent in meetings as a faculty member. I am barely involved in anything and I still have roughly 5 meetings a week. Hell, I have two today. And this is before I have any undergrad advising to do or any office hours. I have to say that seeing the amount of "other" that goes into this job, I am impressed that anyone running a lab can make time to do bench work. I have bee able to get a bit done with a very light set of commitments outside of my lab. In a year I can't imagine how I will be able to pull it off.