Now on ScienceBlogs: WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS!...And Clean Your Stuff
The adventures of a woman in computing.
Jane is an assistant professor in a computing field, and a new mother. Join her as she navigates the tenure track, deals with gender issues, figures out how to be a parent, and tries to have some semblance of a life.
Blogging about teaching: the miniseries
Introduction
The intro courses
The intro courses, part 2
The mid-tier courses
The upper-level courses
Category: research
I have a To-Do list that's longer than my arm. I have multiple deadlines that are Looming Large this week. My scholarly materials are due fairly soon, and there are a couple more things that need to be sent out...
Posted by Jane at 12:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: teaching
One of the questions on the exam asked the students to explain the efficiency of a particular solution to a common problem. We've been doing variations of this analysis since Day 1 in this class. I believe we even...
Posted by Jane at 10:18 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: mentoring
I'm supervising a few independent studies this year, with groups of students working on fairly large and fairly fuzzily-defined design projects. These groups couldn't be more different from each other in terms of the way they act as a group,...
Posted by Jane at 11:04 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: work-life balance
Sometimes, when I look at Toddler Jane*, my heart aches over how beautiful she is, inside and out. Nothing in the parenting books, nor the advice and stories from other parents, can prepare you for what that feels like....
Posted by Jane at 11:16 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: tenure
Text messages from numbers I don't recognize. One of them was creepy enough to put me on edge for the rest of the day. This is especially annoying because I don't have a text plan, so I end up...
Posted by Jane at 11:45 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: teaching
I am fortunate in that in general, I deal with very few grade-grubbing students. Way back when I was a brand-new assistant professor at my current institution, I dealt with quite a bit of grade-grubbing, along with a host of...
Posted by Jane at 10:22 PM • 13 Comments •
Category: tenure
For a few years now, rather than making new year's resolutions, I've been doing new year's themes. I've found it more rewarding to go with the theme idea, which is more like a principle for living one's life and guiding...
Posted by Jane at 12:00 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: tenure
Prioritizing is good. Prioritizing is absolutely necessary in this job. But what do you do if you have time this month to do X projects, but X+1 projects are "high priority"? Is cloning legal yet? Number of high priority...
Posted by Jane at 11:19 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: teaching
In the past week, I've had to have some uncomfortable conversations with students. In each case, the student is failing my class. (And we're not talking barely failing....we're talking obviously failing.) In each case, the student had no idea that...
Posted by Jane at 12:08 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: teaching
I have had two experiences in quick succession that have made me seriously wonder what kind of reading education kids these days are getting. (Jeez, did I just go over into old geezer territory? I think that's the first time...
Posted by Jane at 1:36 PM • 11 Comments •
