Two questions for a Monday

1. There is a job that is close to my parents' place at a private uni (e.g. still hiring!) that maybe I could get. It's near a very major U.S. city, so the employment opportunity for Spouse would be better than at many places. However, a) I am sure my references are getting sick of writing letters for me and b) the chair is actually someone who was brought to work at Prestige while I was there as a grad student. Applying might be embarrassing. Should I suck it up and apply, or let this one go? Spouse and I are not certain AT ALL about the application season this year, since so many places are not hiring and the aforementioned good will from references.

2. I have seen, just this morning, two references to professors who are so stimulating that the students refuse to leave class and want to have an extended discussion about the topic of the day after class is over. This very rarely happens to me. You?

A few thoughts on a Saturday

*We took the girls to a local water park this afternoon. It was not blazing hot, which is a surprise for August here in Central State, and was a good time. So good, in fact, that Bun was asking if we were going to go back to the partament, her name for the place we lived in this summer in Nice State. I wish!

*I have been so tired since school started, and I don't know what is wrong with me. 9 hours of sleep last night AND a nap today while Bun was sleeping, and I am still yawning at 10:30. Need to get this under control.

*Spouse and I are making breakfast tomorrow for the college students at our church. We are located right on the edge of Pretty Good's campus, so we usually get a lot of student visitors on the first Sunday in the semester. They were going to hire a caterer, but that seemed kind of stupid, so we said we'd do it. We are making 3 kinds of pancakes. You should come : )

*I was reading some of the stories about the services for Sen. Kennedy. I found his granddaughter's words about him much more moving than those of Pres. Obama or other bigwigs who spoke. It is a good reminder for me that although I sometimes think about what kind of lasting mark I might be making on the world, the little marks I make on my family, my students and other people who know me are more important to me.

Searching and re-searching

So this semester, I have blocked time in my schedule for research. I find, generally that if I have stuff in my calendar thing that I use, I am more likely to do it. So today, I started in on a paper I got reviews back on this summer with a revise and resubmit. Happily, the reviews are very encouraging, so I think the paper will ultimately make it, and the changes, on the surface, don't seem that hard. Sadly, I decided after reading the reviews that I need to collect a fresh set of data. Happily, unlike Sciencewoman, this won't require packing and arranging childcare. Sadly, it will still be a time-consuming pain to collect. Happily, I think I figured out a way to farm some of it off to a grad student.

So I'm making progress. And that's a good thing.

Oh, and also, one of Offspring's teachers is out of school because one of the teacher's kids has swine flu. And apparently, kids are not allowed at school if anyone in the household has it. I still haven't decided what I'm going to do here, but have been looking at moving my classes on-line.

Work in progress

Day 4 of the new semester, and I am having trouble getting into a rhythm. I had my two three-hour grad classes yesterday, and I guess they went ok. This group is not as bright as last year's group, but they are significantly more extroverted, which makes my job a lot easier. Last year, I had to completely redo my plans and add much larger lectures since they pretty much refused to participate in any discussion. I like to think that as graduate students, they can learn the principles on their own and we can use class time to work on application and integration, but last year, even though they were more capable of learning the material, they just weren't interested in participating in order to do application. I wonder if there is a negative relationship between extroversion and capability in basketweaving...

My poor new Asian student is dying already. I am quite sympathetic, having lived/worked overseas myself, but there is a limited amount that I can do for him. He's bright and has a better command of English than most of them do when they first get off the plane, but the culture shock combined with the hard classes in another language have really hit him between the eyes. So I'm thinking about how to connect him with resources that can actually help him.

And research - I have wrap up some stuff from this summer's conference, but then I have a bunch of new stuff starting up, and I am excited about much of it.

So there we are. Things at home are rough, what with Offspring starting back to school, but maybe more on that tomorrow.

The ones you just don't like

I have a student in my grad program that I just don't like. He graduated from our undergraduate program, was a student-athlete and is international, from a country with a different, pushier communication style than I am used to as an American. He also didn't have good enough scores to be admitted, but the grad faculty agreed to admit him, provided he pay his own way, because they knew he got through our undergraduate program with good grades.

I had him in class, too, and he was one of those Nervous Neds who wants to, for every assignment, come in and have you re-explain all the requirements, then have you "check" several drafts before turning in the final version. I don't let it show, but that was the start of my not liking him. Then, he started our graduate program, having gotten PrettyGood's athletic department to pay for his studies. This means he gets registered by athletics, so I am getting these chipper emails from them saying "Hey Mrs. MommyProf! Golfer wants to take mango slicing in the College of Fruit Studies, but that class is full. Can you do something about that? Thx!" And I have to politely remind him that Golfer is enrolled in the College of Decorative Arts and that as a teacher of basketweaving, I have no authority over Fruit Studies. Golfer can march himself down there and ask for a closed class override from Dr. Mango. It's not a big deal, it's just irritating.

Golfer emails me with no subject line. It irritates me.

And this semester, I will have Golfer in two classes that are both foundational and the most difficult in our graduate program. And I am sure I will have Golfer in my office at least a couple of times a week for handholding through all the assignments. But first, I might see Golfer in a few minutes, since he wrote me that he "might try to stop by" during my office hours this morning.

I am petty, but I am also irritated.

We're baaaaaack

Today is the first day of school for Offspring, and the first teaching day for me. So, fortified with expensive coffee, I prepare to dive back in. Amazingly, the morning went pretty smoothly, considering I was up way late baking banana bread for Offspring's lunch. I had her and Bun help with some of the prep before I went to bed, so I needed to finish it up. Unfortunately, I had to make a run to SuperMegaLoMart to get some groceries for the week and a thing Offspring needs to go back to school. It was packed to the gills with families from Mid-Sized City who apparently realized after their kids went to the first day of school that "Gosh, I need to get my kid some school supplies from that list they sent home in June!"

Then I waited in line behind two other people for 35 minutes while the lady in the front, who had an enormous order requiring the PrettyGood Student in line ahead of me to help her unload onto the conveyor, argued with the cashier about why food stamps from Central State can't be used to pay for #10 cans of nacho cheese product.

But we did it. Offspring has a peanut butter on banana bread sandwich in her lunch, everyone is at their respective schools and the copier is broken because I haven't copied my syllabus yet.

Such is life.

So, who's excited?

My Facebook news feed is full of people who are, gosh darn it, EXCITED, about the semester that begins today.

How about you? How are you feeling about '09-'10?

Maybe you really can't go home again...

I got back last night from spending part of last week with my parents as my dad had his second heart procedure.
Everything went fine, and he is back home and will be able to go back to work tomorrow.

It has been a while now where I have had to acknowledge my parents getting older and slowing down, but this last weekend really drove that home for me. Something about seeing my Dad, who was always a big, strong figure in my life, in a hospital gown and talking about his IV hurting and having to wait for the nurse to come so he could go to the bathroom really got to me.

It is hard to want to let your parents be the adults that they, in fact, are, but also hard to come to grips with the idea that they won't be around forever.

Bleh

I am too young to be this old and bitter.

However, being back at work this week has reminded me that the joy feels pretty much gone from working at PrettyGood. Even new grading pens have not helped.

Syllabus issues

So there has been a lot of commentary here about students texting and surfing on the Internet in class. Generally, this drives me nuts - mostly because I find the constant mouse clicking and occasional typing to be quite distracting and I know other students do to, because they have complained to me. However, this semester, I am teaching in a different computer lab that is much more spacious and has a lot of background noise from the room next door, the ventilation, etc.

So I usually fight to keep such distractions out of my classroom, and have even thrown especially egregious students out for the day, mostly to protect the rights of the students who do get distracted by it. But this semester, I don't know. I could just try to get the offenders to sit on the back row, where they will be less disturbing to everyone, and let them fail themselves.

Also, I heard this week that there have already been a few H1N1 cases at PrettyGood over the summer, and I think there's going to be a significant outbreak here. I'd like to hold out until my 2 year old can get vaccinated, since she tends to be on the gimpy lunged side anyway. I am thinking of asking students with fevers to stay home. Am I being ridiculous?

Just send her over here, I'll slap her silly for ya

So Offspring went to a birthday party yesterday. The birthday girl's family is quite wealthy (like has their own baseball field with lights in their spacious back yard wealthy) and also quite nice and invites a lot of people to this party.

She had a good time for the most part, except for this one little girl who, like Offspring, is in the "social outcast" group at school - you know, the less good looking girls and the overly talkative, smart-but-a-spazz girls.

Well, Outcastia has, for a while now, been, at times, being quite mean to Offspring, saying thing to her (after playing with her for a couple of hours) like "I can't play with you any more. My mother doesn't let me play with nerds."

Last night, she told Offspring that she has never been her friend, she is just being nice. Oh, and all the other kids in school are Outcastia's friends, so no one is going to play with Offspring any more.

Offspring cried all the way home.

It was weird watching the social dynamic that has already developed for these kids. There are the real mean girls, going around surrounded by a cloud of suck-ups and generally pushing them around (and not who I expected to develop into mean girls, either). The boys, who were acting out their aggressive tendencies through various feats of strength in the pool. The whole deal.

It's going to be a long year! Well, 5 years, really.

Getting back into things

Offspring goes to a school that does provide hot lunch, and Central State actually has fairly strict regulations about what you can serve to the children, so they don't have heart attacks and die immediately...it takes a while. It's just that I'm not thrilled about what they serve. Pizza, even with low-fat cheese, twice a week and turkey tacos the other two days does not a healthy diet make. Plus, everything is plastic and styrofoam, so not exactly environmentally friendly. So I usually make her lunch 4 out of 5 days, and let her get the cafeteria food on Fridays. One problem has been that her vacuum bottle doesn't do a great job of keeping her food hot, so I ordered her another one last night. We have fallen into a rut of ham and cheese twice a week and PB & J the other two, so I am hoping to mix it up. Will still gratefully take suggestions below.

Anyway, we've been back for 3 days now, and are starting to get used to the idea of school starting, which happens week after next for us. Spouse has been able to go back to work the last two days, and we have a babysitter coming next week, which means at least Monday and Tuesday, I will as well for the usually greeting of the new graduate students, attending pointless meetings, copying the syllabus, etc. On Wednesday, my Dad is getting two more stents put in, so I am flying to the northeast to be with my Mom, who doesn't drive on the interstate very happily. I'll have to miss the new basketweaving major reception and our first department meeting of the year. darn.

A double-barreled bleg

Anyone know any good mommy blogs by parents of pre-teens?

How about some decent ideas for lunch for a pre-teen to carry to school? A site with something beyond "Wrap lunch meat in a tortilla and cut it into rounds!" or "Kids love salade nicoise!" would be preferred.

Help!

Happy Anniversary to us

So we spent our 19th anniversary driving from Nice State to state adjacent to and more skeevy than Central State. For 13 hours. With a 2 year old.

And now we are back in Central State and I am sad.

Sign that Offspring is wise beyond her years

"I heard this thing about 1000 monkeys with 1000 typewriters for 1000 years writing the world's greatest novel. I think if you left 1000 monkeys in a room with 1000 typewriters, you'd come back to the room and find 1000 dead monkeys and 1000 broken typewriters."

Can't argue with that, folks!

Nice bonus

A paper I did with my grad students won a little (very little) award at the conference. It is really insignificant in the big scheme, but looks nice.

Other conference observations

1. It is a pain when your hotel is a 10 minute walk from the conference one. It is close enough that you can run back, but also close enough that you will want to. Therefore, my knees are killing me from wearing what seemed like reasonable shoes on the city pavement back and forth several times a day.

2. If you look at the attendees of this conference, they are overwhelmingly either the older guy model or the younger (like grad student) female model. Very few people in my age bracket/gender. I know there are a lot of females in grad school. Where do they go? Will try a longer post about this in the future.

Helpful hint for conference travel with grad students

If you decide to take your students to dinner while out of town, consider that their cultural backgrounds might be different from yours. It makes for an awkward evening when one has to ask you what half the words on the menu mean and how to eat things out of the bread basket and another apparently has been in the U.S. for a year and still isn't comfortable wielding a fork.

Conferencing some more

I am taking a quiet break and have learned that the conference hotel has free wireless (Woot!). So far, I have been to a business meeting and a research session that I had a paper in that got great responses from the discussant and audience. I am not sure if I am above the ground or not at present, but I am freezing while the world swelters outside.

I am being bad and skipping the plenary session on academic peer review (yawn. I know it's important, but so is downtime) and my grad students, last I saw them, were huddled in the corner in the exhibits/free coffee room. I've tried to encourage them to get out and mingle, but no luck so far.

I give another paper in half an hour.

But I did get several of the ideas that I need for the fall that I count on getting at this conference.

So here we are.

A conferencing we'll go...

So I am in a conference hotel in a major US city, getting ready for hell day at my professional conference tomorrow. I have 3 papers to give tomorrow, plus two business meetings, so it will be a pretty busy day. I'm also going to try to take my graduate students out for dinner, although that might be tricky to schedule around everything else.

i am staying at a different conference hotel from where the conference is. I usually save money that way, and I prefer to not have to have the professional, happy face on all the time.

Spouse and the girls will be doing the City Pass, and have two exciting things lined up for tomorrow.

I need to make nice nice so anyone who is hiring might think well of me, I guess. But right now, I am just tired. There is something soul sucking about conference season, and I can't say I look forward to it, but I must think it is important, or I would't keep coming back.

Random Bullets of Mondayness

* It's called Google Alerts, and you can read about it here

* We have left nice state, spent the weekend with Spouse's brother's family and somehow miscommunicated our plans such that we were there a day longer than they thought, but were not able to successfully say "Oh, that's fine. Let me use your Internet and I'll just get us a hotel then" Awkward.

* We are now in my hometown visiting my parents. They are not doing well. At all. Not sure what I can do about it. Concerning.

* Got more Google alerts. My stupid article was mentioned in media in Bangkok and London among other things. I think when this dies down (and I think it is starting to), I may write an article about the experience for the Chronicle, if they want to publish it.

* Headed to big conference in my field on Wednesday. Usually a good opportunity to look at the upcoming job market. Colored my hair so as to look younger/better able to compete with all the fresh-faced new Ph.Ds going through the "job placement in a hellish conference hotel basement" center. Wondering if my paragraph on Page A12 will have been read by anyone at the conference and if so, if it is a good or bad thing.