ABSTRACT

This summer, once again I became a writing program director. Having assumed the role twice before at another university, I thought I knew what to expect. My first duty, I figured, would be to train new teachers of my university’s required composition course. Yet early on I found myself immersed in a different task: getting better offices. For the last several years, the program’s headquarters had been an assortment of small, separate rooms, hardly an ideal base of operations. Moving proved difficult, though. I wound up in prolonged negotiations with the department’s chair, associate chair, and other program directors, all of whom were staking claims to particular territories. I am glad to report that after several tense conversations, we all did obtain good homes. I write these words in a nice, large office that was formerly the department’s chief meeting room and the site of our debates over space.