Moving on

Today I moved the first couple of boxes of things into my new office in Karpen Hall, on the other side of the quad. So, as of two o'clock this afternoon the only thing marking the place as "mine" is a shelfful of poetry.

The Honors Program office is adjacent to the Laurel Forum, one of the nicer small event venues on campus. It's a two-story room with attractive floor-to-ceiling windows on one side, shelves of books on another, and pleasant paneling and woodwork on the remaining walls. It's just been recarpeted and refurnished. The Honors Program "owns" this space and gets dibs on programming events there, though others get to claim it for their goings-on, too.

My own office connects on one side to the Forum via a door that's traditionally been closed (I let Queshia, my assistant, know that I'll often be keeping it open) and on the other to Queshia's office. You've got to go through one or the other of the intervening spaces to get to my place. I have to admit that it leaves me feeling a bit barricaded. I need an escape hatch.

This afternoon, after arranging my poetry books on a shelf at the back of the office, I sat behind my desk for a few minutes and wrote a few lines of verse before moving over to the Forum. There I sat and stared out the window, looking onto the patio between the Forum and the quad.

"How strange," I thought. "How did I get here?"

I'm looking forward to this next phase of my career, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit scared. We'll see what the future holds.