Getting organized--finally

This summer I didn't really take much of a break--I spent time traveling across North Carolina conducting focus groups with high school students, and when that finished, I spent time traveling around North Carolina conducting focus groups with adults to talk about their knowledge of clinical trials. When I wasn't traveling and discussing topics, I was often reading or writing to finish reports. It was a good summer, but not as relaxed as I might have liked.

At the beginning of the summer, I decided I should get organized. My desk had become a mess throughout spring semester, but I just never had the motivation to tackle the task. I kept saying I would get around to it, and the mess kept piling up. By mid-way through the summer, this is what my desk looked like:

The pile of books to the right came from one attempt to clean the desk that never got completed. Well, this Friday, I decided it was time to finish the project. I spent a few hours going through stacks of papers, creating folders and organizing books.


Shawn wants to know why I need so many books directly on my desk--in part it's because I use them, because a number of them are library books I don't want to tuck away somewhere and lose, and in part because I don't really know where else I would put them. I did manage to take a small stack and put them in a cabinet, but when you have roughly 30 books you want to be able to access kind of easily, storage can be an issue.

Here's the finished product:

It may look more organized, but I am sure it will just be a matter of time before some random papers start to stack up again...You use so much paper in grad school!