I wish our school lunches were like this...

I pack lunch for Offspring most days, because the lunches at school are not appetizing, minimally nutritious and they let the kids serve themselves, which seems like a food safety disaster waiting to happen.

I wish it were more like this.

Need your advice

I usually watch a trashy reality show (or 3) in the summers. Next Food Network Star and America's Got Talent have new seasons and will have slots one and two, but I need a third, especially since Treasure Hunters (loved that one) and The Mole (also pretty fun) didn't get renewed this season.

I'm not really into the rich/famous doing bad things or the dating genres, but am open for suggestions otherwise...

Also, I get to read fiction in the summer. I always like ideas for new things to read...I don't read romance or westerns, but just about anything else is a possibility.

Administrivia

Lots of little red tape issues this week.

First on the ticket. I called last week and was told that the tickets don't get put in the system for 10 to 14 days, so to call back after that. So that was yesterday, and I called and talked with someone different who said it is 20 days and that I can call back after that. I had to sign something saying I would take care of it within 30 days, and the Prof. family is supposed to hit the road for Nice State next Wednesday, before the 20 days is up. The lady I talked to yesterday said I can handle everything through the mail, but with a 10-day turnaround over 1,000 miles and the threat of jail if something goes wrong, I am worried. So I don't know what I am going to do about that.

Then, basically as a result of a lunch meeting I had with this guy who controls some budget for a non-profit I work with, he agreed to give me a little bit of money to pay a few grad students this summer. Our grad students make something between diddly and squat, so it's really not much money, but it is money, which you would think would be a good thing.

So I need to translate his promise into money into an account at PrettyGood that can be used to pay the students. I write to the grant officer who has dealt with money from this source before in another department and get no answer for 10 days. I try the grant officer who services my department, who does answer. Now I have to go through the whole PrettyGood grant process plus get a slap on the hand for not following procedure before seeking money. Except it wasn't really like that. So there goes my week.

Last full week of school for Offspring

Today marks the beginning of Offspring's last full week of school. I think the learning has pretty much ended for the year, and next week (3-day week) will be sure to have no content, since the teachers' grades are due this Friday.

I wish I could take Offspring early - go to a museum, go on some hiking trips, etc. instead of her going to school to sit through "Educational Game Day" or "Movie Day," but I can't.

In other good news, Spouse had his first paper in long while accepted for publication, which maybe means we are getting closer to being able to leave. Maybe.

Up early

So it's the only day of a 3-day weekend and my kids and Spouse are still asleep. It was also 6:07 this morning when I woke up an couldn't go back to sleep. Darn you, internal clock!

Long day

We took our Girl Scouts to a badge extravaganza at a drive-thru safari thing about 90 miles from here. Left at 6:30 in the morning, got back at 7:30 at night.

A couple of the girls in my car are real city kids and hadn't even ever seen a deer before, so it was cool to see them with a giraffe eating out of their hands.

Now I am tired.

The new and improved MommyProf

Now 100% in-law free.

They are fine, but we are always ready to go after a visit, and apparently it works both ways.

What made me laugh so hard I cried today?

This.

Care issues

So after being on the waiting list since three months before she was born, Bun has finally been offered a place at PrettyGood's lab daycare. Right now she is at a daycare at a local church that I have really been pretty happy with. They have caring, experienced teachers, a decent curriculum for a two year old (Bun really likes singing and art and they have both in spades) and Bun seems happy there. They have a good diversity of families attending, and the cost is reasonable.

PrettyGood's daycare has teachers with advanced degrees in child development, a much lower child-staff ration plus the lab students who rotate in and out of the classroom and better meals. PrettyGood's daycare has a lot more physical room.

We have issues with age - Bun is, like Offspring, heading in the more academically capable direction, although her talents seem to be in different areas. She is one of the youngest in her group at her present daycare, and I think that's a pretty comfortable group for her to be in. At PrettyGood's daycare, she'd be the oldest, which has issues like she would be the only potty trained one in the class, and wouldn't have the older kids to learn from.

I am really torn.

Generally, we are not educating them

So I agreed to be on this faculty evaluating committee for student competency in presenting academic work to others. The accreditation compliance office went to various classes and videotaped various students giving presentations in classes, and we have this rubric of "how to give a successful presentation" that we are supposed to judge them against.

A few thoughts:

1. It is obvious in the first minute of each presentation which students have been taught presentation skills and which haven't. If we expect each student who graduates from PrettyGood to be able to present his/her work to an audience effectively rather than mumbling to a PowerPoint with back to the audience, then said student must be expressly taught that in class.

2. Since I know that most students are not required to take speech classes, I think they must be be seeing modeling in the classroom that shows that these kinds of presentations are appropriate. I know I do a couple of the things we are supposed to grade down for on the rubric (like pacing and playing with objects). But I do also teach presentation skills when I have them do presentations.

3. It is good for students to learn presentation skills, but I don't know that it is fair to the students to subject them to several hours of this during instructional time. See above.

4. "Cool" professors sometimes get bad effort from students.

5. I wish I could give this rubric to the people who will be presenting at my next conference. If I see one more person put up a slide filled with data in a tiny typeface, say "You probably can't read this" and then mumble at it, I might become upset.

LIke OMG

So we took the inlaws on a road trip to fun, in-state vacation city to a theme park today. We had to drive down there in 3 cars, since Offspring and I had to come back tonight for school/work tomorrow, Spouse/Bun can stay tonight and come back tomorrow night and the In-Laws are staying a few days.

Spouse and In-Laws are in front and, because I don't generally speed, just on principle, they got kind of ahead of me. I was trying to catch up with them, the limit dropped as we approached Capitol City , and ... cue the blue light special (traffic cop for those of you who never lived in the South).

So now, MommyProf has her very first (and I sure hope only) speeding ticket. On a trip with the In-Laws. Which may well be in the top 5 mortifying things that have ever happened to me.

So, any of you who have had one of these things before, I'd love any advice you might have to offer. please.

In-Laws

So my in-laws are here now. We made them look at vacation pictures until they fell asleep in their chairs last night. Funny - I never thought I'd be one of those kinds of people...

Interesting

So I ended submitting several papers to the big international conference in my field, two of them to the same section. In that section, one got in and the other didn't. So I got to see both the "you are awesome" and the "the competition this year was extremely competitive" letters.

I think I have a new scholarship goal

I don't want to die prematurely, but do you think I could be as "prominent" as the other guy?

Two prominent technology scholars cast as extras in Star Trek film.

Calling all you dream-ologists out there

So I have this recurring nightmare that I have been having for years, and had for each of the last 3 nights. It's not always identical, but always has this similar element - I'm in a soulless conference hotel at the big international meeting in Basketweaving and I'm lost. But I have something important to accomplish like a paper to give or a person I'm supposed to meet or something like that.

Last night, the conference hotel was actually, at least in part, a cruise ship, with long hallways of tiny rooms and really insufficient elevators which didn't all go to every floor, so I would wait through a big crowd for an elevator spot, only to find that it really went to the lobby.

Other times, the hotel will be attached to a mall and I'll accidentally wander into the mall part and get lost.

So what do you think?

Mommy to the rescue

So I am staying home this a.m. to get more snuffing done on the house before the in-laws' imminent arrival.

I was looking at our coffee table and saw Offspring's completed spelling homework that she forgot to bring with her. Even though I am 5 minutes from her school, I decided to not carry the homework up there, even though there is double jeopardy at her school for not having homework when it is due (both an academic and a disciplinary plan consequence)

This is in part because of something Spouse is going through right now with a student who didn't do well in his classes, and will be going on probation and, therefore, losing his tuition support that PrettyGood offered him The student's mother has written to Spouse repeatedly asking for how the student's grades could be so low when he did so well in school before and told his mother that he put in hours on projects. The mother has also written to the student's assorted professors this semester.

Oh yeah, and it's a grad student.

I don't want to be like that, and I think it may all start in 4th grade...

Or maybe I'm just a mean, mean Mommy.

Moving Forward

So ScienceWoman challenged readers to compose a post on moving forward, which is a topic I have been thinking about a lot lately.

Regular readers know about the tenure issue, the two-body problem (secretly more of a four-body problem) and the job search. For those of you who don't, searching the tenure tag will probably catch you up.

So I find myself here. I signed a contract for next year here at PrettyGood and, honestly, unless something pretty amazing happens, I think we'll be here for a while, mostly because of the four-body problem. Spouse is tenured and the girls are really pretty happy here. We even (Finally!) got Bun a spot in TotHaven, the university's lab pre-school if we want it.

So I am left to think "Where do I go from here" now that it kind of feels like my career is in a permanent holding pattern. I think I've decided that I should do what I like. And even though I had to take a demotion to stay at PrettyGood and I have less time, I like teaching, and I think I am pretty good at it. But I also like research. Over the last few weeks, I've had some really solid ideas for new projects, so I am going to work on them over the summer. They aren't the easier, quick route to publication kind of projects I'd need if I were tenure track, but now they don't have to be.

So in a sense, by staying put, I get to move forward. And I think that will be ok, for a while at least.

**And maybe if one of the projects really flies, I can write Spouse and myself right out of Central State. Maybe...

Suck it, Monkeys!

Guess who just finished grading? Me!

Let the whining begin, but I was VERY generous on the final projects, so it's all refutable.

Who's done? It's me. Oh, yeah.

Happy Mother's Day

So Mother's Day is drawing to a close. Spouse and the girls took me to breakfast at a favorite place this morning, which we all enjoyed. I took Offspring to see Star Trek since a) it brought up a lot of good things for us to talk about and b) I wanted to see it again. And Bun and I enjoyed reading a book that used to be her favorite that we found yesterday.

My girls are great, and I love them so much.

The tally

So at the end of the semester, as the final grades are being tallied, I make a stab at how many things I have graded this semester. Most, but not all, of my assignments are fairly short, and thus are reasonably easy to grade, although very few are the multiple choice or fill in the blank type of easy.

But I am in an applied field, so the assignments are frequent - 2 or 3 a week per class, plus major projects and test.

This semester's total? 860

Of this, I have 29 left.

This, my friends, is why I made the big money. And why I need the summer to be free from teaching!

Boldly going where others have, in fact, gone before

Saw the new Star Trek movie today.

It. Was. Great.

Much better than I expected.

The storm

You know it's been a peachy awesome week when you get to church to help out with college study time and the eerily nice and chipper college minister asks you how you are doing and you answer "Pissed off."

There's a lot of stuff that I can't go in to related to my two-body problem and stuff at PrettyGood that's weighing heavily on my mind right now.

That plus the two hours of sleep I had last night should put me in a fine mood for grading exams, indeed.

I am hoping that this venti Starbucks I got on the way into work will do its magic soon.

Randomness for the calm before the storm

1. Another reason why I should get the Mother of the Year award. After Offspring finished all her work last night, I told her she could play this game she likes for 20 minutes. I gave her the 5 minutes til bedtime warning. Then I forgot about her and she ended staying up an hour past bedtime.

2. We are painting our bedroom, and the color is coming out different from what we wanted. My in-laws are coming for the first time in 7 years next weekend and I am freaking out, since we don't have time to paint it again.

3. One of my colleagues stayed up until 4 this morning grading student projects, even though grades aren't due for another week. Reason? "The students really wanted their grades." I think this is madness.

4. I have a really crappy looking pedicure right now, and forgot to swap my "get Offspring off to school" shoes for some closed-toe models. So I'm really stylin' today.

5. I go to a church on the edge of PrettyGood's Campus, so we open one of the buildings for students to study in from 8-3 a.m. every day during finals. I'm on the graveyard shift tonight from 11-3, so I'll probably be grading the projects I am getting tonight at 6:30. So I guess I am mad, as well.

Guess who is caught up on grading....

until tomorrow at 6:30, that is.

The bad, the fun and the slogly

Well, I signed a contract at PrettyGood for another year, and I am having to start thinking about how I make the career work at this point. My position has changed into either "lecturer who is still required to do research" or some other thing that I can't really name. I didn't get to do a full-out job search this year, mostly because of the health scare last fall, which, had it been bad news, would have meant that this is a really, really bad time to switch health insurance carriers. And I can try again next year, now that everything should be clear, but it is becoming pretty obvious that given my two-body problem, anything I can do to write my way out would be very helpful.

And I've been working on it. I've got four papers under review at the big, international conference in my field right now. Of the four, I think three could make it to a journal eventually - two at the international level and one at regional. I am looking at the summer, where I could, conceivably, have some mental space, and am thinking about my next project. I have three ideas: the bad, the fun and the slogly.

The bad idea is one of those things that, while publishable, will not lead to much in the way of new knowledge. It's also an idea that I am not really all that excited about. But it is easy, and could be done this summer, I think.

The fun idea I am pretty excited about. It would be journal-length by next summer, would lead to two presentations along the way, and would, among other things, let me have a phone conversation with someone who fascinates me. It would also be a contribution to knowledge in a relatively important way.

The third idea, slogly, would have the most impact and look best on the vita. It would build on work I have been doing for about 5 years and could quite possibly require some overseas travel. Some of the work would be easier to do in the summer, since it doesn't require specialized software that resides at PrettyGood and doesn't involve talking to people, which can be tough when the kids are around. BUT, it's book-length, which means a long commitment for some very hard work that I'm not entirely sure I have it in me to do, since my background training is always that shorter is better.

So, fair reader, what would you do?

Things Offspring wants to do more than what she needs to do

Needs to do:
*Read giant AR book (found one she likes, but it is almost 600 pages and there is only a week left)
*Practice piano

Would rather do:
*Grade my papers
*Wash dishes by hand

So perhaps I am becoming one of those bloggers...

I have spent the last several days making up blog posts in my head that I never quite get written. They were great - about end-of-semester grading, Facebook, swine (oop, 2009 H1N1) flu and more.

You'll be glad to know, however, that I did get quite a few pictures from Spring posted in Facebook...

Anyway, today is the last day of classes. That means that I see the non-major class that I sincerely hope to never, ever teach again for the very last time (excluding the final). Actually, doing it again wouldn't be so bad, since now it is prepped, but still, it wasn't my favorite. We have finals next week and then graduation, if we make it that far without the H1N1 panic shutting us down. Actually, I've heard that public health officials would prefer that campuses stay open since it makes it easier to track disease centers, and I completely understand that.

Offspring had her high-stakes state testing this week, and I honestly think they are not planning to learn anything else for the rest of the year. Today, her homework was to bring in a beach towel and snacks. They have a music performance next week, a field trip the week after that, field day the week after that, then Memorial Day and then that magical day when the Prof. family gets the h*ll out of Central State for two months.

I support public education and I am glad we have pretty good public schools where I live and all that, but I do think the amount of time spent on test preparation and testing is a little out of control. Since Christmas, Offspring has spent minimum two hours a day on test prep and review, over material she could have passed in September. It is a shame that there aren't the resources to pre-test the kids early in the year and then separate them into intensive prep and not-so-intensive prep groups. I think this is my bias because when I was in school, there was ability grouping, and socialization and fairness issues aside, I think it did serve the academic needs better for all the students.

I don't know. I have to stay at work until 9 tonight proctoring a department final for all the sections of the non-major class, so I am at home this morning doing domestic things. My in-laws, who have not been to see us in 9 years, actually bought plane tickets for two weeks from now, so I have to get everything up to snuff. It is far below snuff right now, so I guess I should get to snuffing it up.