Alice shares...
skookumchick | December 9, 2009You might have guessed this was coming. My blogging frequency has dropped off dramatically this year, particularly this semester. I keep writing "yep, I haven't died yet - I'll tell you all about what I'm doing sometime, really" posts, and not ever following up.
Other signs have included....
I hardly participated in Donors' Choose even though it is a really worthwhile organization. (By the way, today I donated $377 as a 10% contribution of our final donation number. Thanks so much to everyone who donated anything at all!!)
I hardly even read blogs anymore, let alone write. And this wasn'…
skookumchick | December 6, 2009On December 6, 1989, an armed gunman named Marc Lepine entered an engineering classroom at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec. He demanded all 48 men in the class leave the room, lined up all 9 women against a wall, and, shouting "You are all a bunch of [expletive] feminists!", proceeded to shoot them. He went into the hall and shot 18 more people, mostly at random. He finally shot himself.
He had killed 14 women all together, and injured 9 more women and 4 men.
The women who died could have been anyone. They could have been your friends, your mothers, your sisters, your lovers, your…
sb admin | November 27, 2009This week we are reading Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. This video was produced with a dedication to Kate, who explained to me why kids like this book so much even before they understand everything that's happening in it. She wisely told me that it's because kids rarely get to hear a story about a kid getting really mad, expressing their feelings, and without a neat fairy-tale or moralistic ending. Alexander just has a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day, and he's not afraid to tell us about it.
I'd also like to dedicate this post to all of…
sb admin | November 20, 2009I am not in charge of SciWo's Storytime. Sure, it might look like I'm the one reading the books and operating the video camera, but Minnow exerts the ultimate executive authority as editor-in-chief. Some weeks no videos whatsoever are allowed to be made, some weeks she's content to let me pick the book, and some weeks she is quite happy to make a whole string of videos, so long as she chooses the content.
With that proviso, Minnow presents this week's edition of SciWo's Storytime featuring the book Little Squire the Fire Engine by Catherine Kenworthy and illustrated by Nina Barbaresi.
Now…
skookumchick | November 2, 2009Folks, I don't know what to tell you. It's like I don't even remember how to blog anymore. I think I've posted 2 real posts in 2 months. I have ideas stacked up in my head for posts - a post from FIE 2009, a post from SWE including the cool "Father Knows Best" episode where Betty decides to be an engineer, a post about talking to my students about sustainability, my favourite holiday Halloween, how I quit my therapist (because I did - and your comments really helped me do so) and so on - but I have absolutely no energy to write them. No motivation. No interest. Just.... overwhelmingness…
skookumchick | October 14, 2009I had a realization over the weekend, as I contemplated the enormity of the amount of work I had to do, and the scant allowance of time in which to do it. I have suddenly realized why (at least junior) faculty can be so horrible to their graduate students and post-doctoral staff. It comes down to a complete gridlock of their time.
I have so many people who need to meet with me (I know! Lowly me!) that my days are filled with meetings, or getting to meetings, or class. This means there is really not enough time to get any work done, such as prep for such meetings or such class time. So I…
skookumchick | October 13, 2009Hi, I'm Alice. It's been 11 days since I last blogged.
Things have been busy over the last couple of weeks - even more than usual. I started listing out the stuff I've been doing, but rather than making me feel like I had gotten a lot done, it was just making me tired, so I deleted it.
Instead, I'm going to share a thought with you that I had yesterday. Well, maybe more than one.
Some of you may know (or remember) that I've been seeing a therapist off and on over the last 3 years. I started going for reasons other than why I kept going - when I moved to West Lafayette from Illinois, my…
skookumchick | September 25, 2009A few weeks ago, a post-doc and I were walking past the Physics building on campus when we saw some beautiful yellow fungi coming out of a tree.
Little did I know that, later that week, I would actually *eat* those fungi. And I haven't died yet.
My friend and colleague Donna Riley is visiting our department on sabbatical this semester, and turns out to be a marvelous cook, knitter, and, apparently mushroom hunter. She has already come across some chantrelles in the forest, and it was she who noted that the pretty fungi were not only startling to look at, but good to eat.
They're…
skookumchick | September 22, 2009While it is hard to go back to the daily slog of the semester after having a more freewheeling summer, I do like the fact that you can set all kinds of new academic patterns. Like an Academic New Year, as my friend Julie put it. One of my academic new year resolutions: get some data collected on our ADVANCE research projects. I mean, it's almost been a year, and we've been bogged down getting protocols through IRB, and then someone raises some concerns somewhere, and we need to revise the protocols for IRB again. It's been pretty frustrating.
Not only that, but my time has been taken up…
skookumchick | September 21, 2009Friday was our 5th wedding anniversary. :-) Can I just say? I think living in the same place has been good for us; way better than being 213 miles apart.
We had a weekend packed with festivities, including:
Ordering take-out sushi and watching the last few episodes of season 1 of Mad Men (I know, we're so two years ago
Inviting friends and colleagues over for a dessert party on Saturday, at which we served apple pie, yellow cupcakes, and diet coke chocolate cupcakes (as an attempt to provide dessert for diabetic friends), fruit, and a few savoury items to clear the palate (and our…
skookumchick | September 16, 2009We found a new friend at the dog shelter this weekend. I have been "between dogs" since my family's beloved Psyche (our beagle who was attacked by the cougar) died of lymphoma in 2004.
Here's Psyche on Christmas 2003 (and me with really really long hair):
My husband has never had any pets, and I've been so busy that we've been working up to getting a new friend for a looooong time. We were looking first for living in the same city together, then feeling more stable, then not traveling over the summer. Finally the time seemed right, so we started visiting shelters to find a friend in need…
skookumchick | September 8, 2009Mmmm...wasn't a 3-day weekend marvelous? (Except for those of you at institutions which don't observe Labor Day, or choose to observe it by having ununionized people labor). We did all manner of fun things including canning tomatoes, dropping by a music festival, and weeding. :-) Of course, now it's back to the grindstone, and my head is full of work-related "to-dos" so I thought I would write this in lieu of a for-realz post.
Recently in my travels on the internet, I came across two Flickr sets I thought it would be fun to share with you - but beware the procrastination monster.
First…
skookumchick | August 25, 2009One of the things I thought about on our road trip was the role that blogging plays in my life. In case it hasn't been totally obvious, I have not had much of a blogging groove over the summer, despite the appearance of more time.
I realized that I need to actually build in blogging time into my schedule (yikes!) to be able to meet the commitment I made to Science Woman, but I also realized that blogging time would allow me to record some of my reflections on "how things are going."
However, I also have been having lots of stuff going on IR-working-L that I haven't known how to blog about…
skookumchick | July 25, 2009Folks, I know my blogging has been near non-existent recently. I've just come back from yet another workshop (this time on engineering and identity - v. cool) and tomorrow we head out on vacation. We're camping across the country, then spending some time with my folks in Canada, then camping back. I suspect the intertubes will be thin on the ground but will post snippets when I can.
I'm also at the cusp of making a big decision, and the time away from online I think will be really helpful for me. So I leave you in the hands of the always insightful Science Woman for the next few weeks - I…
skookumchick | June 23, 2009There is irony in doing research on women engineering faculty members, and being a woman faculty member in engineering. One side of my brain tells me that the research says women (and men) who self-sacrifice for their students and colleagues burn themselves out, and instead should figure out how to say no more often; the other side of my brain tells me, "You've worked through the last 2 weekends and are tired, but your 4 students and postdoc need work plans from you before you leave for a conference in Europe on Friday, and you have 2 reviews for IJEE due Friday, and you have to read another…
skookumchick | May 23, 2009Okay, so I finally updated our family blog with what has been going on behind the scenes here at Chez Nous, and I will share some of it with you, through the power of copy and paste and with only a modicum of overlap. Voila, I present to you my last two weeks (only some of which is work-related)!
We begin my update with:
what happened two Wednesdays ago, namely that my department head has announced his resignation, effective July 1. I am hoping he has sent out an announcement to all those folks who should find out from him, and not from reading this blog. It has been a very emotional year…
skookumchick | May 20, 2009Okay. As mentioned, I've been smacked down. I think I'm so deeply tired that it is going to take weeks to recover. I have to have some tough conversations with people over the next few days, not the least of which with my students, and I lack the energy to do so. But I also did a Good Thing: I went to my dad's retirement party.
On the drive there, I just drove. It's about 280 miles from West Lafayette to Madison, takes about 5 hours depending on the traffic in/around Chicago. While I was there, I just sat, mostly. And took some photos. After the party, I continued to sit. I sat…
skookumchick | May 9, 2009Quick update from RL: ScienceWoman is dealing with some intense stuff in the real world, and while she may or may not blog about it, might benefit from some shout-outs of encouragement from any readers so inclined. Go ahead, I'll wait...
[good vibes being sent to SW ...... NOW!]
I have 3 posts in my head to write, but they're now competing with day 2 of my first migraine since November. Boooo. The unbloggable actions continue (and no, not application-to-other-institution-worthy), and came with a 2 hour conversation with my Dean last week (who I continue to think is a completely fabulous…
skookumchick | April 20, 2009I've noticed that a certain grimness has entered my colleagues' and my attitude over the last week or so. It's a "there is only (X) days/weeks left, we just have to finish" attitude, similar to what I anticipate marathon runners experience around about 24 miles or so. A just keep going, don't break down now, you are mortgaging your body with lack of sleep and too much effort, but keep going, you only have a little bit left, and then you can sleep kind of thing. Does that sound familiar?
Well, to try to combat this attitude in myself, my husband and I took ourselves camping this weekend.…
skookumchick | April 17, 2009It was 3 years ago today that I started blogging. I started with a pseudonymous blog, at the edge of the internet, as a lonely graduate student, trying to navigate my dissertation, a long-distance relationship, and unsure future career prospects. My blog, with my pseudonym, is still out there because the prospect of cutting it off made me feel like I was lying, like I was ashamed of what I wrote. But I'm thinking, on this anniversary, maybe it is time to take it down. Retire it, and the url too. Because maybe I could then bring my pseudonym back out of the shadows, where it has been…