You drop the copies of your syllabus on your office desk. It's already distressingly full of papers, books, scrolls, and more, crowding the creaky old computer that the school's IT department must have found next to a dinosaur skeleton in Arizona.
You haven't had time to make the office your own. You sometimes get the ghostly feeling that Blankenship is haunting the room. You only took enough time to clean the fast food wrappers out of the desk. Dr. Blankenship had an unhealthy penchant for Taco Bell and the hoarding habits of a crow. The bookcases and walls are bare, your scholarly belongings still in the back of your car. Other than the mess covering your desk, the only other decoration in the office is a stack of moving boxes in one corner. They contain everything Dr. Blankenship left in his office when he vanished. You're curious about what's in them, but you'll have to wait for a free day to explore them.
Maybe you'll have a day off after you get tenure.
Speaking of, it's time to get to work. You want to get as much done as possible before the new faculty luncheon.
You could work on your research lab. When you were hired, you negotiated $5,000 in start-up funds. It isn't all that much considering that you have to pay the college every month for your lab space, part of the administrative staff, and a scholarship for your inherited student. The first payment is due before school starts, so you won't even see that full amount.
Then there's your class. You have a 1-2 load this year: one class in the fall semester, and two classes in the spring. It's a remarkably light load, but all are new classes for you, and preparing new classes takes a lot of work.
Finally, you have a paper to review for an academic journal. It won't take you that long, all things considered, but you've been putting it off for weeks.