academic adventures
skookumchick | February 14, 2008We've met, we've gotten educated, we've gotten married, and almost all in two different cities. Now I've quit my job so I can finish my dissertation, and we live together, what a concept.
Okay, year together, blah blah blah. Gardening, working, eating locally, helping each other, all good things. I'm not kidding when I say it was a relief that we still liked each other - I had heard all these horror stories (okay, maybe 2) of academics who lived apart for 25 years, retire and live together and then get divorced because they had never had to live together before.
Anyway, there are no…
skookumchick | February 13, 2008My husband and I will have been "together" for 10 years this July. Of those 10 years, we have lived about 3.5 in the same city. It's a hard gig.
We met when I was an undergrad and Steve was a grad student (scandalous!) over the summer when I was home from college, working in a water chemistry lab. He made goofy jokes about the carbon analyzer and wore Wallace and Gromit t-shirts, and our first date was to go see Mulan (no kidding. We now consider Disney to be bscs=blood-sucking corporate scum, an opinion we recognize we can only hold for now because we don't have kids who love them yet…
sciencewoman | February 7, 2008I should say up front that I work in a fairly family-friendly department. They were fantastic when I interviewed (Minnow was just 1 month old) and my colleagues have occasionally asked after her development. I brought her to class once last semester and nobody said anything negative.
And there's a couple of really committed Dads in the department.
Generally, that's great. I'd love see all dads actively involved in their kids lives, and I'd prefer to work with colleagues who understand that there is life outside of science.
But what's not so great is when I see those colleagues getting cut…
sciencewoman | January 24, 2008In the past week and a half, a series of both anticipated and unforeseen circumstances have been keeping me away from campus almost half of the time. First it was the snow day, then the MLK holiday, both of which meant no daycare. Tuesday I lost an afternoon to something unbloggable, Wednesday day care called to tell me that Minnow was feverish and had thrown up and could I please come get her. According to state laws (and common sense) if daycare sends a kid home early, they can't come back until the fever has been gone (without Tylenol) for at least 24 hours. Today, Fish took care of her…
sciencewoman | January 7, 2008The semester is barrelling down on me. In fact, I have about three unoccupied work hours available to me before I give my first lecture. Thus, while I'd like to be reflective about my upcoming courses and how I'm going to fit research into my life, I'm too damn busy.
sciencewoman | January 3, 2008I "worked" at home this morning and finally made it into the office around 2 pm. When I arrived, I discovered that:
The syllabus for my new course that I had started before leaving for holiday has disappeared off my computer. It will not be quick to reconstruct.
I was rejected for a grant that would have been really good for me, despite receiving excellent reviews.
Sigh. I suppose now I really need to get to work.
sciencewoman | December 17, 2007Out the door - meaning one
I just submitted a revised version of a paper. Yay! Too bad that doesn't actually mean anything for my CV. But maybe I'll get an acceptance before I have to turn in my CV update for our annual review. This also means that I'll eventually take down my InaDWriMo badge. I need to decide what to put in its place. Any suggestions?
Out the door - meaning two
I'm going to be in the field tomorrow, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm excited about getting to see some new sites and get some collaborations going. Minnow is coming along on the first trip, so she adds a lot of hassle,…
sciencewoman | December 14, 2007Step 1. Spend all of your start-up money. Or not.
Step 2. Who needs lots of lab renovations? Just use a space last used by another department. Cabinets are cabinets after all. But be sure to call Health and Safety to dispose of any left-behind chemicals you find.
Step 3. Buy one large piece of lab equipment and some field equipment. Field equipment doesn't need anything more than storage space in your lab, so that simplifies set up substantially. The large piece of lab equipment will either come with a technician to get it set up or with very good instructions and support to get it working…
sciencewoman | December 13, 2007Dear Administrator,
I know that everyone in this building lacks blinds on their office windows, and I realize that you have requested that blinds be installed. However, I have a particular need for blinds in my office and I hope you can forward my request to Facilities Services with some urgency.
In the current configuration of my office, the sun strikes my computer screen for several hours per day, making it very hard for me to read the screen. I would like to rearrange my office to mitigate this problem, but every single other arrangement leaves another problem in its place.
If I move my…
sciencewoman | December 12, 2007If I had the chance to do one thing over again in the whole job search process, I wouldn't hesitate a minute before making my decision of what to change.
I did a miserable job negotiating my start-up package. Actually, miserable may be too nice a word.
(Let's pause for a moment and put things in context: I had a baby. A month later the whole family flew across the country for an interview. I rocked the interview and I got all sorts of encouraging signs from the department. They told me that they would call within a few days. Weeks passed. About 7 if I recall, but who's counting. I didn't…
sciencewoman | December 11, 2007I've got lots of posts planned in my head, waiting to be typed when I turn in my grades. The three hours of sleep I got last night are unfortunately hindering my ability to think straight and I made a bunch of errors on the scantron key, which is slowing down the whole process. I guess the good thing is that I wasn't the one writhing in stomach (?) pain last night, just the one dealing with it. I wonder what we ate.
/incoherency
sciencewoman | December 10, 2007I recently met with the chair of my department to discuss my course load and how to set things up so that I wasn't prepping 2 new courses every semester from here to infinity. The problem stems from the small size of our major and graduate programs, which means that a lot of courses will only sustain enrollments every other year.
He looked at my proposed schedule for the next 1.5 years and proclaimed it insane (well, not exactly those words but that was the gist). Since I was in total agreement with his diagnosis, we've come up with a plan that sounds a bit more reasonable. And the plan…
sciencewoman | December 10, 2007I think my colleagues are sometimes incredulous that I have lived in Mystery State for almost 5 months now and still have seen nothing of its natural environment.I haven't been to the Mountains or the Water. I haven't even been to State Just to the South, despite it being a mere 30 minutes away.
I'd love to go to Mountains, and I'd love to go to Water. I'd love to get out of metropolitan Mystery City for once. My hiking boots still have Northwest mud on them, for crying out loud. Not getting to know the land around me is affecting me personally (I'm having a hard time realizing that this…
sciencewoman | December 2, 2007I'm having a research crisis at the moment (watching a whole line of my post-doc work threaten to disappear in front of my eyes) with an imminent deadline looming. The last day of class is Tuesday and I need to write a lecture, a study guide, and eventually exam. Not to mention grade a bunch of very short assignments. We spent Saturday buying a car, and today grocery shopping and doing laundry and dishes (necessary for continued functioning). Minnow's asleep in her crib (and has been for an hour). Please excuse me if I haven't much to say for this Mommy Monday post, instead I'm going to spend…
sciencewoman | November 29, 2007If you'll recall, in mid-October I had a disaster morning and ended up bringing Minnow to class with me. In the comment thread, Tara asked a great question: "What did my students think of it?"
So I asked them. (Honestly, it was the reason for instigating the mid-semester evaluations, which turned out to be helpful in their own right.)
I gave a list of possible answers and let them select multiple choices.
34% said it was "A chance to see that professors are human."
53% said "Great. Bring her anytime."
28% said "Acceptable under rare circumstances, but shouldn't happen on a regular basis…
sciencewoman | November 24, 2007My post a few days ago has set people debating what the conventions are for addressing faculty at different universities. It seems that the form of address is highly dependent on where in the world you go to university.
Let me explain where I'm coming from in insisting that my students call me Dr. Woman rather Mrs. Woman. And then I'm going to ask for suggestions for next semester.
In my UG at an old-guard American university, everyone was Dr. lastname, except the really ancient and honorable profs who were Prof. lastname. In grad school, faculty were firstname or first + lastname.
The class…
sciencewoman | November 20, 2007After class today, my best student confides to me that the most recent assignment was the toughest thing he's had to do in college so far. I take that as a tremendous compliment.
Why? The students had to get out into nature and observe at least four -ology features. Then they had to succinctly describe the features in 300 words or less.
I like the assignment because it does two things: (1) makes students apply what they've been learning in class to a real-world environment; and (2) learn to write more clearly and concisely. These are the two things that I think college first-years struggle…
sciencewoman | November 16, 2007I'm this close to crying in my office. I just got out of a candid chat with a visiting speaker and another young female faculty member about work-life and workload issues. And bringing up so many stressful things at once was just too much. I'm starting to have nightmares about next semester. I have two new upper level preps - one on a subject I'm barely familiar with (don't ask why) and one with a lab. That's 9 hours of class time per week. I'm barely hanging on this semester, how can I possibly manage that sort of load? I'm counting the classes until the end of this term and realizing that I…
sciencewoman | November 14, 2007Note: This post was originally published on 1 July 2007 at my old site. I am reposting it here and nominating it for inclusion in the Open Laboratory anthology. There is still time to submit your favorite posts from this blog, your own, or other blogs you read. Here's how.
Sometimes I get depressed when I read the blogs of other women scientists - particularly when the topic of children vs. an academic career is the topic du jour. The short version is that many of us seem to think we have two choices: (1) Have a career and no children, or children we never see; or (2) Give up our plans for t-…
sciencewoman | November 9, 2007WooHoo! I just got notified that a small grant I submitted has been selected for funding. It's not much but it will let me hire an undergraduate student to help me out with some summer research. What's important is that it marks the first time that I've been a sole PI on a (non-student) award.