A Day in the Life of...

Happy Tuesday, friends! For those of you who are new to my blog, I've decided to give you a glimpse into a day in the life of yours truly...I hope it doesn't scare you away! :-) Here goes...

At 7:30 AM, I greeted the day rather tiredly due to being up late last night. My parents were coming home from a trip to Nashville, and I was their designated ride from the airport...at 11:20 PM. (Good thing I like them!)

After finding appropriate work attire (which takes me far too long) and a quick bowl of cereal and cup of tea, it was off to work.

The workday started at 9 AM today, and as soon as I arrived, the busy-ness began! It's a crazy week! My first task was to check my e-mail and make sure that my campus visits were in order. There have been two visitors today, and it looks like both of their visits went smoothly--a wonderful thing!

Most of my time between 9 and 10 AM was devoted to a highly undesirable job. This year, GSE Admissions has created a survey for our applicants. The applicants fill out the survey right after they submit their applications, and they answer questions about how they heard about GSE, where they're from...that sort of thing. Because this was the pilot version of the survey, we left most of the answer spaces open-ended for students to respond as they wished. And therein lies my job...delving through the 631 responses to find trends and commonalities. The results are sometimes very interesting, but the digging process is less than enjoyable. I suppose that we all have to do things we don't like at times! :-)

At 10 AM on Tuesdays, we have our Admissions staff meeting. Because we're right in the middle of application season, our meetings have been pretty long of late, so we spent a good deal of time hearing from our technical support staff on updates to our admissions database, as well as some time chatting with Tom, our financial director, about aid packages for incoming students. By the time the meeting was over, I had three pages of detailed, single-spaced notes to compress into "meeting minutes."

Right after the 10 AM meeting was an 11 AM meeting...a brainstorming session that I organized between a few people from admissions and a few from student affairs. We discussed the best ways to keep in touch with students throughout the admissions to matriculation to orientation process, and we came up with some pretty great ideas! Stay tuned!

To my joy, the 11 AM meeting was the last of the day, so noon meant freedom...until I remembered that I had to finish compiling the results of the admissions applicant survey! Argh! Luckily, it's a lot easier to classify "where are you from?" than "How did you hear about Penn GSE?" (and trust me, people have heard about us from 5,436,768 different sources!). I recorded the significant survey results into a table and that was THAT. Woot.

It is now 2:11 PM, and my workday is coming to its near end. I have to finalize a few campus visits before I go and then it's off into the sunshine!

My anticipated evening plans include...
-fitness (say prayers that this actually happens...it needs to happen!)
-making cupcakes for my globalization class tomorrow
-reading for my globalization class tomorrow
-tea and reading the book I'm finishing (I know graduate students aren't "supposed" to read for pleasure, but I can't help it!)
-job searching online

Rather lofty plans, I know, but I set my goals high! Typically, I have a three hour public speaking class tonight, but it's canceled for this week, and I can just feel the productivity possibilities overtaking my being! WHO KNOWS what I'll manage in three whole HOURS?!

Have a great day, everyone!