Mundane is not frustration free

For those of you who really want to know what a professor does, here a list of recent mundane and routine activities.

* Spent innumerable phone calls to three persons to sort out the project budget and get coordinated for submission of the budget through the appropriate University channels.
* Spent oodles of time fussing with the budget, after I created it in Excel, to get the amounts to come out as needed. Yes, we do work backwards from a bottom line. That's a whole skill unto itself, given that quirks of calculating the indirect costs and fringe benefits.
* Wrote the renewal for the KRISP grant, finessing the finer points of objectives not met.
* Spent hours uploading the renewal files into HRSA's antiquated online grants reporting system.. Unfortunately, very few grants managers on campus know how to use it, so me and my project coordinator have become the experts.
* Directed my project director to call tech support for that online system. The answers, my friend, were basically blowing in the tiny font, several links buried.
* Emailed communications with a student and her master's paper second readers (yes, the unusual plural) to get coordinated on helping the student.
* Wrote revisions to two manuscripts which had received a "revise and resubmit" decision.  Oh, the allure of publication.
* Attended  faculty meetings and more faculty meetings. Mostly surprisingly good.
* Meet students at a WIC clinic in south Chicago. It was a field trip for the MCH students, so that they could see first hand what it is like and learn what is involved for pregnant women and mothers with infants to get WIC assistance.
* Skimmed or read articles in the stack of professional journals that never seems to get any smaller. If only that would happen for me with some highly valued commodity...
 * Forwarded to co-authors notification of one papers and a symposium that was accepted for presentation at Academy of Management. Getting accepted for this is a medium big deal. You'll hear more about that as that meeting nears.
* Made hotel reservations for the upcoming KRISP Project and conference travel. The university system doesn't allow for making reservations (although we can purchase the plane ticket), and hotels require a credit card number to hold the room.
* Oh, and least I forget, did my Editor-in-Chief work of finding reviewers for manuscripts, accepting/rejecting submissions, and generally keeping the email communication up to date.

All in all, not glamorous, not flashy. Just mundane with a hefty dose frustration (I'll let you guess which activities). Still, I got the jobs done.