sick and tired of being....

It's feeling like my germy students have struck again: I've come down with one of their (many, many) plagues.... AGAIN.

Today in class I (semi) jokingly said that I wanted to install a decontamination zone for them to scrub down in before entering the lecture hall.


This was met with silence.


Then someone in the front row piped up: "Maybe you could bring a big bottle of Purell so all of us could use that right when we get in?"



I love my students.

Tales from the classroom

Today a student sent me a frantic email request for an extension on her paper. She explained that she couldn't get to the paper this past weekend. She cited her poor performance on the last paper as a reason for needing to get feedback on a complete draft... but there was no draft, hence the request for an extension. She then went on for a paragraph or two about some other personal issues.

Okay.

The problem is, there is not an assignment due tomorrow in my class. In fact, I haven't assigned ANY papers for my classes this semester.

Yeah. My student sent the email to me by accident.

She was already going to come by and meet with me on Friday to discuss some homework questions. Should I even acknowledge her problems with this other class? Based on her email, she is NOT doing well in her other class.....and I'm a little concerned that it might be because she is focusing all of her studying on my class.

Hmmmm..... what would YOU do?

Breaking up is hard to do

Some might say that nothing lasts forever. Breaking up is inevitable. You drift apart. Even if you were helped through the roughest times.

In my case:

Seven-figure grant submissions.
Tedious bus rides.
Calming down after horrible encounters with Awful Coworker.
The Thesis.
Job interview preparation.
Long delays at Sucky International Airport.

(to name a few)

So why would I ever turn my back on what got me through such dreadful times?

Oh, dear iPod, I am so sorry. Your iTunes are expensive, and I'm too chicken to plug you into my work PC (what if you self-erase!!??). You have been replaced. pandora.com gives me fantastic playlists. Old stuff, new stuff.

So I'm sorry. Perhaps we will slowly build back up to our previous relationship. After all, at one time I thought we were soulmates.

Where do you keep it?

Every once and awhile Instyle magazine asks Academy Award winners where they keep their Oscar. Answers range from the typical (on a shelf, in the office, on the nightstand) to the unexpected (chicken coop, bathroom, storage).

The other night, I was digging through a cabinet trying to locate the top to one of my coffee travel mugs. Underneath a pile of books I noticed some (vaguely) familiar gold lettering. There, wedged between my fireproof safe and Paris travel guide was my thesis.

I remember, back at the start of graduate school, thinking that I would always keep my thesis on my bookshelf in my office. I figured it would be inspiring to the undergrads that came to my office hours.

Ha.

So. I gotta find out if I'm the only one. Where do you keep your thesis (or where do you plan to store it)?

Sit your over-scheduled [you-know-what] down!

It drives me absolutely batty when people leave seminars early. If you can't stay the full hour, don't attend. If you are that interested in the first 20 minutes of a 60 minute talk, email the speaker for some slides, schedule a fucking meeting, and read some papers. You are rude. You are distracting those of us actually interested in the *whole* seminar.

Even worse than the seminar attendees that leave after 20 or 30 minutes are those that get up in the middle of Q&A to leave. Like those extra 5 minutes are going to truly affect your day. There are other buses. Your husband can wait 5 more minutes. If day care requires pick up right at 5 pm, then DON'T FREAKIN' ATTEND SEMINAR.


[end rant]

The Trailing Spouse

Trailing Spouse: n. The person in a relationship that gives up their job to follow their better half to a new place (often many states away) where their better half already has a job.


10 years ago, I was applying to colleges.

5 years ago, I was selecting a research group.

3 years ago, I was finally an official Ph.D. candidate.

A year ago, I was sending off my first academic job applications.


None of these decisions were made for anyone else but me. I didn't consider geographic location or someone else's feelings. The people that I dated at the time I knew (deep down) were temporary missteps.

So flashforward to today. Today I'm in the enviable position of being in love. Aw. How sweet. I'm not finished.

As a result of this sweet, sweet love, I'm in the unenviable position of trying to find a tenure-track job close to N.A....who already has a tenure-track job.

Although I do tend to put others' needs ahead of my own, I'm not used to taking others into consideration when it comes to major life decisions. Sure, I could just cast a super-wide net, snag a job in another state, and force N.A. to choose between his awesome job and me.

Yeah. Not going to do that.

Hopefully, a year from now, I'll be blogging with NA by my side. We both have tenure-track jobs, and I don't have a commute.


Isn't it great how love brings out buckets of blind optimism?

Teaching personal responsibility

In class, I stress that students must be self-motivators. It is up to them to get the work done. I don't grade homework problems, so it is completely their decision to do the problem sets each week. About 70% of my students routinely do the homework. (It doesn't hurt that there is a direct correlation between homework completion and high quiz grades.)

At LargeU, when students did poorly on a quiz or exam, they tended to blame the examiner (ME). Here at TempCollege, such students are the exception. Students mostly just get angry with themselves. They recognize that they can only blame themselves for a poor performance. They come to my office hours to go back over botched problems or ask for a list of tutors.

This weekend I even had emails from students APOLOGIZING to me for their most recent quiz performances. If I can get them to move from apologizing for a bad quiz to performing well on the next quiz, I think that I will be able to mark this as a very successful week!

Tit Talker

One of my colleagues is a tit talker. Now I fully understand that many people are shy. I will be the first to acknowledge that shy people may tend to look down when they speak in order to avoid eye contact. I also am taller than average and usually wear heels... so that puts my boobs approximately at eye level for several of my colleagues.

But.

I still get vaguely uncomfortable when a coworker constantly talks to my (smaller than average) chest. How do YOU handle a tit talker (and I'm talking to both females and males here)?



Oh, did I mention that this coworker is female?

Early bird gets the worm? Please.

I am *not* a morning person. Without an alarm or obligations, I am happiest if I sleep from 2 am until 11 am.

This morning I had to be in my office by 7 am. I haven't been to work that early since grad school. Now that I'm a (not-so)big time professor, I just try to be in by 8:45 am.

Even as a grad student, by the time I was past my preliminary exam, I rarely was in to work before 8 am. Back when I was still in classes, I was *always* at work by 7:30 am, but that was purely out of necessity. How else was I going to get a new research project going, teach two classes, AND get my homework done?? Looking back, I think it is nothing short of a miracle that I didn't have a nervous breakdown after three months of that, let alone 1.5 years. I suppose I was fresh enough out of undergrad that 4 hours of sleep a night was still doable.

Now I need at least 5.5 hours in order to be effective in the classroom. Seven feels heavenly. Nine hours of sleep makes me feel blissful enough to cook for N.A. (okay, not really... but it does make me feel pretty damn good).


If N.A. happens to read this, I suspect he will be pushing the tylenol pm or ambien on me in order to have a chance at a proper meal. Ha. I've been here in TempVillage for almost three months. In that time, I've used the stove twice (both times when N.A. was in town) but have yet to open the oven.

To get me cooking is going to require a LOT more than nine hours of sleep!

Sign of things to come?

Last week, I gave my students their first exam. Some time towards the end of the exam time, the door knob in the classroom broke off. We couldn't get the door open. For the last minutes of the exam, none of us could leave.

I eventually got the doorknob back on, releasing my students to their weekend.

But I couldn't help but think: is this a sign of things to come?