Those words are in the imperative mood; they aren't a suggestion, they're a command. Yikes!
My heart was troubled yesterday morning -- "the best laid plans..." I was so proud that I'd figured out such an easy way to inform out of town folks of their status at 6 a.m. yesterday, using SMS sent out in batches using wireless broadband. When I went to do so, I realized I had 0 bytes in my account. I arrived at the Vodafone shop two hours later; and after waiting for twenty minutes for the shop to open, I bought the cheapest plan so I could get the information to families waiting for it.
I got home to find out that I couldn't send any messages. And then, the power went out. Finally at 3 p.m. I returned to the Vodafone shop, where the very helpful salesperson who sold me the plan despite knowing what I needed and that it was useless for what I needed, sold me an additional plan (very cheap, mind you) for SMS messages. Finally at 4:30, after many families had already been contacted by phone, I got the SMS messages out.
Thought it didn't work, it did work. What do I mean? That the SMS had listed a website (a blogger page, actually) with results, criteria for decisions, etc. For those accepted there was a link to Google documents where they could download the same documents people here in Dodoma were receiving. Already this morning there have been many visitors to the site.
Frustrating, yes; but ultimately it was an okay day (even restful in some ways given that I avoided the office -- knowing from previous experience it is better not to be available to meet on the day of publication of decisions, giving disappointed parents a day to cool down -- and given we had no electricity). Of course, not having electricity meant that I could not work on the article due in two days for a Spanish journal -- hoping to be able to spend some time on that.
This week I'll be trying to tie up some loose ends re: hiring faculty, dealing with the admissions process, and generally trying not to let my heart be troubled. (I'm reminded as I write that of Emily Dickenson's line: "'Consider the lilies' is the only commandment I ever obeyed.")
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