Five professors were scheduled to move in the day after tomorrow ; but that morning a large piece of ceiling had fallen in the kitchen, filling much of the ground floor with dust and debris.Jane had not been very surprised by this event. One of the things she knew by now was that for anyone in an administrative position, probably right up to the dean of the Arts College and the provost and president of the University, the question is always, “What is going to go wrong today, and how will I deal with it?” As her husband Alan had said of his own department chairmanship, “You take the job because you have ideas about how things could be better, and then you spend most of your time keeping them from getting worse.” Over the past few years she had learned to anticipate and even in a way to appreciate problems and their repair.Jane usually got to the Center just after lunch. During the morning she was at her other job on campus, where she was the administrative secretary of the Humanities Council.
