Striding into the future!

Hello all,

I am feeling hugely optimistic today about life and, above all, this fantastic place where I work. Sure, some things get done in interesting time, and some things aren't always wonderfully organized, and some things are frustrating and/or really entertaining, but this place is really an exciting place to be. We had new employee orientation today and it's not that they said anything that was particularly new, or motivating or inspiring, but I got to meet a lot of people that I remember from last time I was here and, more importantly, I got to meet and talk to a lot of the new employees (like me!). And there are some really, really fantastic people here. And everybody seems very excited about things. And some of the new Vice Deans seem extraordinarily positive and upbeat and energetic, and I think that will really push us into the future. Anything is possible!

And things are improving every day. What everybody has to remember when judging this place is that it was opened in 1999. That makes it less than a decade old. As one woman said to me once, can you imagine what it must have been like to be Yale College at under a decade old? They were Puritan ministers, all of them, concerned with converting the heathens and saving the world one well-covered sinful soul at a time. I recently watched a movie with Julie Andrews in it called "Hawaii," about a minister from Yale and his wife (he had to marry Julie Andrews kindof sight-unseen because missionaries were only allow to go abroad if they brought wives with them, so as to avoid being tempted by the local heathen women as they ran around bare-breasted). I mean, it was a very entertaining film. But at the end of the day, that's what Yale was like until.... I mean, pretty far on into its history. So this place is, comparatively, doing pretty darn well. Do you suppose Yale had a curriculum review process at the age of 8? Probably not. Do we? You bet your socks. Well, sortof.

Anyway, I know I spend a lot of time here commenting on how ridiculous everything is (I made my first recon mission into the men's wing the other day -- this was something different from discovering the hidden man across the hall from me -- and it turns out they have their own little coven in the middle of one of the academic buildings, where all of the male professors have their offices, and the man in charge of IT stuff, and all of that. A very useful location to be familiar with.). And some things ARE ridiculous. But for every ridiculous thing there is something fantastic. Like the fact that we apparently have a 93% retention rate, which is apparently something of a miracle, I am told.

Additionally, we are really pushing the envelope on women's education and women's place in the workplace, and i think few people outside of Saudi Arabia realize how much progress has been made. The mere fact that there ARE male professors is kindof amazing; men would never have been allowed to teach young women in the past (and sure, girls who want to take classes with male teachers still need to get permission from their fathers). We have the first undergraduate Architecture and the first Engineering programs EVER for women. We have opened three new majors in the space of the last five years, and we only graduated our first class in 2003.

I just want to highlight the fact that if there was ever in the world a place with nearly unlimited potential, it is here, and now. There really isn't a more exciting place a person like me could be working.

Inshallah things will continue to be fantastic!

In the meantime, something to add to the list of ridiculous things. Ramadan starts at the end of this week sometime (this is not the ridiculous thing), and during Ramadan all normally 8-4 hours are shortened to 10-3 (this is the ridiculous thing). So, in addition to having nearly two and a half weeks of vacation at the end of Ramadan for Eid and whatnot, classes barely meet and people barely work. All over the country. And NOW you know why I am concerned things which are left until Ramadan will never get done. I mean, I understand that people have very different priorities during Ramadan, and that is as it should be, but to practically shut everything down for a full month is... extreme, in my opinion. Especially because, coming at the beginning of the school year as Ramadan does this year, it makes it unfortunately very likely that classes won't really get any momentum going until AFTER Ramadan ends - which is late October! No wonder the Fall semester this year feels like it's going to be a mad-house.

That's all I have to say for the moment.