small comforts

Somewhat comforting truths about academic life, especially for those of us who have to complete annual reports of our activity:

• you don't have to list the number of persons in the audience during your panel at the conference;
• you don't have to specify whether the search committee you served on for 11 frickin months actually wound up hiring anybody.

Sigh. All those meetings during the summer for this university-wide administrative search? Down the drain. But hey, I got to know some old guys from over in the Sciences.