jane

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November 10, 2008
Could somebody please explain to me why some senior faculty feel the need to treat the tenure process as a hazing?* Possible hypotheses: 1. These faculty members never quite got over the teasing and hijinks aimed at them in junior high/high school and are exacting revenge on a powerless faction (…
November 9, 2008
So as you can probably tell, since I've gotten around to posting the Scientiae carnival, I'm feeling better. Well, I'm out of bed, at least, so that's something. I think it's going to be a long road back to feeling like my "normal" self, though. I'm still tired all the time. Case in point:…
November 7, 2008
Hello, and welcome to the November edition of Scientiae! The month of October was filled with tricks and treats galore; costumes were donned, and a rollicking good time was had by all. Or at least most. Or some. Anyway, read along to find out who got treated, who got tricked, and who's still…
October 30, 2008
So the last time we heard from our heroine, she was battling the evil germ invasion. But that was over a week ago. What's happened? Has our heroine successfully fought off the germs, brought balance and rest back to her life, and gotten back on track with work? Well, not exactly. She's just…
October 23, 2008
If you get very little sleep for several weeks running, ... and work under extremely stressful conditions (like, oh, say, tenure review), ... and fail to take time for yourself to recharge, ... and hang out with germy people, like college students and toddlers, all day, then chances are really…
October 16, 2008
How I would have liked to spend my day today: 8:30am-noon: Work on research noon-1: Lunch with colleagues 1-3:30: Work on class prep/grading 3:30-4:30: Coffee w/ friends 4:30-5ish: Minor work tasks: email, update to-do lists, more grading What my day actually looked like: 8:30-9: Respond to…
October 14, 2008
So I'm hosting the November edition of Scientiae, and I just put up the call for posts. Please consider contributing something for the carnival! Posts are due no later than 11:59pm EST Thursday, October 30.
October 13, 2008
1. Baby Jane, who is one of the world's best sleepers, woke herself up coughing last night, then decided that if she was up, then the rest of us should be, too. 2. Which culminated in a 4am full-blown, all-out temper tantrum. 3. I got 3 hours of sleep. That number may be a bit generous. 4. This is…
October 9, 2008
A week or so ago, I was telling Mr. Jane about a dream I had. In the dream, one of my colleagues had found my blog, but was totally cool with it---gushing over it, telling me I should "definitely include it in your tenure packet", and offering to go to the chair and let him in on the secret. (…
October 4, 2008
That's the best way to describe how I feel right now: it was a whirlwind trip to GHC (did it seem to anyone else like the schedule was just CRAMMED FULL this year?), and I'm mentally and physically exhausted. I'm sure I'll have more posts in subsequent days about more specific stuff that came out…
September 30, 2008
OK, I think I've finally figured out what my schedule looks like for Grace Hopper (with all the logistics going on, you'd think we were trying to move the pope or something) and I have some possible meet-up times. (I was going to email the interested parties, but then I realized that I don't have…
September 24, 2008
As I may have mentioned, oh, once or twice or 20 times, I'll be at the Grace Hopper Conference this year. I'm still trying to figure out my schedule and such while there, but I'd love to try and meet up with fellow bloggers and readers, if we could possibly pull such a thing off. So, if you're…
September 23, 2008
This year, our department (finally! finally! after years of wheedling/wishing/hoping/pleading) is seriously discussing issues of retention, recruitment, and climate. I'll have much more to say on this later. But for now, I want to focus on an interesting side discussion that's come up: Should…
September 16, 2008
Well, so much for the year of being in balance, and so much for keeping my life in control. It's still relatively early in the school year, and I am already completely overwhelmed. I've been up since 5am today. At one point today, I had 47 unread emails in my Inbox---and I check my email…
September 10, 2008
I saw this meme over at Adventures in Ethics and Science: The Vegetarian's Hundred, a veggie-flavored response to the recent Omnivore's Hundred meme. I'm going to play by Janet's rules, which are: [original] If you want to play along, here's how you do it: copy the list, including my…
September 8, 2008
For reasons that I don't even pretend to understand, Baby Jane has entered an extreme Mommy Attachment phase. Most of the time, she's her normal, independent toddler self. The rest of the time, she apparently feels some strong need to be held by me or to attach herself to my legs or whatever…
September 3, 2008
In the past at around this time of year, shamelessly borrowing an idea from Laura at Geeky Mom, I've made resolutions for the new academic year. I've been trying to think about what I want my resolutions to be this year, but I've had a hard time of it. Maybe it's the stress of the tenure year…
August 28, 2008
...I'm playing hooky! I'm declaring not just a work-free weekend day, but a work-free, computer-free, long weekend. With nature and good friends and good food and all that fun stuff. See you on the flip side, and hope you all have similar enjoyable holiday weekends!
August 27, 2008
The most popular question I've been asked lately, on campus, by colleagues: "Is this your tenure year?" Technically and officially, no, it's not---the clock stopped for a year because of Baby Jane + my sabbatical. So I go up next year. But in my mind, yes, this is my tenure year. If you think…
August 25, 2008
Doesn't that sound scandalous? Sadly, it's not scandalous. But it is pretty darn cool: I just signed up for free childcare. At a computer science conference, no less. Yes, of course I'm talking about the Grace Hopper Conference. Continuing their fine tradition of being one of the coolest…
August 25, 2008
If I feel like I need to take a day or 2 off, I should just take a day or 2 off, stress-free, and not try to "work through it". I need a couple of weeks to decompress after all of the end-of-the-year stuff before I can really get down to doing serious work. (A vacation would be a really good idea…
August 18, 2008
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 I've used the phrase "kids these days" in a blog post. Next I'll be…
August 13, 2008
Typically, when I want to use a student's work that s/he handed in as an assignment for one of my classes in another context, I email the student to ask for his/her permission. For instance, sometimes I want to use a student's assignment as an example of a particularly well-done assignment, or to…
August 11, 2008
...absolutely no worse feeling in the world, than watching your child being loaded into the back of an ambulance. Baby Jane is just fine now---it was more of a scare than anything else, nothing seriously wrong. But I can honestly say that I've never felt as scared or as totally helpless as I did…
August 6, 2008
It never fails. During particularly stressful times, I tend to have nightmares. (In fact, sometimes I don't even really know how stressed I am until I start having recurring nightmares.) They were especially prevalent during my third-year review year, during a hiring mess a while back, and then…
August 4, 2008
I'm teaching an intermediate-level class in the fall that I've taught a few times before with varying levels of success. I've taught it enough times that it's time to do some tweaking, and I find that I'm faced with a very interesting dilemma. In a nutshell, the dilemma is this: which thing, or…
August 4, 2008
So. I was gone for a bit. Yeah, the plan was to do a "best of" series of posts from the old blog in my absence: after all, this was something I could easily set up beforehand, and besides, we'd have some Internet access while gone, so I could always post from the road! As you can see, that…
July 22, 2008
It's been a while since I've done an official Baby Jane update. In fact, I don't think I've done a proper one since I migrated over from the old site! Time flies. So, what is Baby Jane (now Toddler Jane, I guess) up to these days? Basically, it can be summed up in three areas: Movement,…
July 17, 2008
Where is my summer?? I thought once July hit and the busyness of June subsided that I'd actually have time to, you know, maybe, relax a bit. Ha! This has been a particularly busy week. The good news is that after today, things do get easier and calmer. (Of course, playing Guitar Hero for 3…
July 10, 2008
I've been doing some on-and-off thinking lately about teaching (summer is a great time for that, away from the pressure of the school year). One of the things I've specifically been thinking about is the idea of "transparency". I'm curious to hear what you, faithful readers, think/do in terms of…