I've been a very bad blogger recently - life has been busy. And now I'm off for two months of field work across oceans and foreign lands, so I probably won't be updating much, if at all, until the end of August.
Enjoy the summer!
2 hours ago
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
one year
I'm officially one year done - I'm not the newbie anymore, I'm no longer on the "new faculty" email list. Most of the other faculty recognize me as a fellow faculty member, even if they still don't know who I am. Most of the facilities, business and purchasing people definitely recognize me.
I think I've been away from the classroom long enough (and have had enough time to digest the final student evaluations) to reflect on the first year, even though part of me is shocked to find myself suddenly in "summertime." It went quickly, that's for sure!
So let's start with the most obvious failures! Whoo!
Research:
Huh what? Yeah...not really. I bought shit for my lab. Not all the shit I need, but a good starting batch of gear, and I am mostly set for physical space. But research didn't happen this year. At all. Unless you count a little bit of literature review for some grants and stuff, which I really don't. I did a good deal of talking to people and feeling things out, and spent one day in the field testing some stuff that I bought. I think that after all that, I have a good idea of what I want to do with myself from here, but I didn't make any progress at all in terms of obtaining real results.
The one thing I did accomplish was to figure out that the fancy machine here at SLAC that I was excited to use for FREE will not actually tell me anything useful. Which is too bad, but it's nice to get SOMETHING out of a hypothesis, even if it's just a negative result.
Grant Writing:
I wrote up two small external grants - one rejection and one success. Not that fabulous, particularly considering that I haven't even STARTED writing a larger grant. Which I really need to do. But I think the grant I write will either be related to the new project I'm starting this summer or to a collaboration that has been only very briefly discussed and will be started in earnest in the fall. So I need to get my ass in gear in terms of grant-writing in the fall, Priority One.
Publishing:
I got two papers revised and finalized and in press or published. I resubmitted a rejection to a different journal. I gave two talks at conferences and proposed a session for an upcoming meeting. I have one additional paper in review, and will hopefully be getting the preliminary data for a new paper sometime next week. Even though most of this was carry-over from the year before, I don't think it's that bad for the first year, and I'm guaranteed to have papers with my name on them from both the current calendar year and the next. That gives me time to work up the next batch and try to keep a paper-a-year minimum, which should be more than enough for SLAC tenure.
Teaching:
Here's where I spent all of my time. I made a lot of mistakes, but I also learned a lot, and I enjoyed it. In general, I've done pretty well. My reviews have been pretty good for the first year, or so I've been told, and by this last term I was getting some very nice, ego-boosting feedback from some of my students. They seem to like me, which is always gratifying, and they seem to be learning something too.
A lot of the mistakes that I made are easily fixed. I need to be more clear regarding expectations, particularly in my lower-level classes. I need to spell things out, and explain WHY we're doing all the things we're doing. I thought I was doing that, but it became obvious that the things I needed to clarify were not things that would ever have occurred to me on my own. So, live and learn. I get to repeat my fall class this coming year, so I'm really looking forward to making it better.
I think my biggest failure was my upper-level class. I need to get myself out of the mindset of my own background and think about what these kids have actually done and how prepared they might be for the material I want them to cover. I also need to get better at leading discussions - I think this is my biggest weakness. I feel that I've really found my place as a lecturer in terms of style and level of interaction (at least for a beginner), but I suck at leading discussions. I tend to either talk too much or too little, and the students either feel that I'm lecturing them or that I'm letting people say whatever they want without direction or cohesion. I think I might try to find a good discussion-leader and sit in on a class or two in the fall.
Despite those shortcomings, I haven't gotten any hate mail or horrible reviews, so I'm pretty happy. I think I can be GOOD at this, and I hope things will start to come together next year. I hope that I'll eventually be able to tweak the details instead of overhauling entire courses before I teach them again.
Overall:
I really like this job. There are a few places where I really need to improve, but I think I know what they are. I've largely been left on my own during the first year - freedom to fail, I suppose - but SLAC has also been very supportive whenever I've needed some help. That might not be the case everywhere, I'm sure, but I appreciate the atmosphere here. And the students make it very worth-while, even on the bad days.
This summer I'm back to some research, which will be nice and will hopefully motivate some grant writing in the fall. If I can manage that and get a paper written, I'll be happy with my progress in 2009.
I think I've been away from the classroom long enough (and have had enough time to digest the final student evaluations) to reflect on the first year, even though part of me is shocked to find myself suddenly in "summertime." It went quickly, that's for sure!
So let's start with the most obvious failures! Whoo!
Research:
Huh what? Yeah...not really. I bought shit for my lab. Not all the shit I need, but a good starting batch of gear, and I am mostly set for physical space. But research didn't happen this year. At all. Unless you count a little bit of literature review for some grants and stuff, which I really don't. I did a good deal of talking to people and feeling things out, and spent one day in the field testing some stuff that I bought. I think that after all that, I have a good idea of what I want to do with myself from here, but I didn't make any progress at all in terms of obtaining real results.
The one thing I did accomplish was to figure out that the fancy machine here at SLAC that I was excited to use for FREE will not actually tell me anything useful. Which is too bad, but it's nice to get SOMETHING out of a hypothesis, even if it's just a negative result.
Grant Writing:
I wrote up two small external grants - one rejection and one success. Not that fabulous, particularly considering that I haven't even STARTED writing a larger grant. Which I really need to do. But I think the grant I write will either be related to the new project I'm starting this summer or to a collaboration that has been only very briefly discussed and will be started in earnest in the fall. So I need to get my ass in gear in terms of grant-writing in the fall, Priority One.
Publishing:
I got two papers revised and finalized and in press or published. I resubmitted a rejection to a different journal. I gave two talks at conferences and proposed a session for an upcoming meeting. I have one additional paper in review, and will hopefully be getting the preliminary data for a new paper sometime next week. Even though most of this was carry-over from the year before, I don't think it's that bad for the first year, and I'm guaranteed to have papers with my name on them from both the current calendar year and the next. That gives me time to work up the next batch and try to keep a paper-a-year minimum, which should be more than enough for SLAC tenure.
Teaching:
Here's where I spent all of my time. I made a lot of mistakes, but I also learned a lot, and I enjoyed it. In general, I've done pretty well. My reviews have been pretty good for the first year, or so I've been told, and by this last term I was getting some very nice, ego-boosting feedback from some of my students. They seem to like me, which is always gratifying, and they seem to be learning something too.
A lot of the mistakes that I made are easily fixed. I need to be more clear regarding expectations, particularly in my lower-level classes. I need to spell things out, and explain WHY we're doing all the things we're doing. I thought I was doing that, but it became obvious that the things I needed to clarify were not things that would ever have occurred to me on my own. So, live and learn. I get to repeat my fall class this coming year, so I'm really looking forward to making it better.
I think my biggest failure was my upper-level class. I need to get myself out of the mindset of my own background and think about what these kids have actually done and how prepared they might be for the material I want them to cover. I also need to get better at leading discussions - I think this is my biggest weakness. I feel that I've really found my place as a lecturer in terms of style and level of interaction (at least for a beginner), but I suck at leading discussions. I tend to either talk too much or too little, and the students either feel that I'm lecturing them or that I'm letting people say whatever they want without direction or cohesion. I think I might try to find a good discussion-leader and sit in on a class or two in the fall.
Despite those shortcomings, I haven't gotten any hate mail or horrible reviews, so I'm pretty happy. I think I can be GOOD at this, and I hope things will start to come together next year. I hope that I'll eventually be able to tweak the details instead of overhauling entire courses before I teach them again.
Overall:
I really like this job. There are a few places where I really need to improve, but I think I know what they are. I've largely been left on my own during the first year - freedom to fail, I suppose - but SLAC has also been very supportive whenever I've needed some help. That might not be the case everywhere, I'm sure, but I appreciate the atmosphere here. And the students make it very worth-while, even on the bad days.
This summer I'm back to some research, which will be nice and will hopefully motivate some grant writing in the fall. If I can manage that and get a paper written, I'll be happy with my progress in 2009.
Friday, June 5, 2009
looking my age
One of these days I will have reflections on my first year. Maybe when I'm actually done with everything.
For now, a few reasons why I'm feeling overly young this week:
Forgetting to wear my faculty name tag has gotten me a lot of comments like "Congratulations on graduating!" and "You did it!" During finals week a student I had never met told me "good luck on your exams!"
A student came by to discuss grad school preparations and asked me, "you went to grad school, right?" First of all, little students, how else do you think people get this job? Also, don't give me that face of horror when you find out how long I spent going to grad school. Yes, I am old enough for that to have happened.
A few weeks ago when I was sick the local pharmacy refused to sell me some drugs without an ID because I had to be EIGHTEEN. It wasn't even sudafed. I was too sick to know how to respond to that, so I left. My students thought this was pretty damned funny, and informed me that I should be happy that people think I'm so young. I tell them how old I am, and they don't believe me.
I don't think I look that young, people! But apparently I'm wrong. Before I even started this job, someone at a workshop told me that I should make sure I dress up, because otherwise I would be mistaken for a student. I thought she was crazy. I guess she was right.
For now, a few reasons why I'm feeling overly young this week:
Forgetting to wear my faculty name tag has gotten me a lot of comments like "Congratulations on graduating!" and "You did it!" During finals week a student I had never met told me "good luck on your exams!"
A student came by to discuss grad school preparations and asked me, "you went to grad school, right?" First of all, little students, how else do you think people get this job? Also, don't give me that face of horror when you find out how long I spent going to grad school. Yes, I am old enough for that to have happened.
A few weeks ago when I was sick the local pharmacy refused to sell me some drugs without an ID because I had to be EIGHTEEN. It wasn't even sudafed. I was too sick to know how to respond to that, so I left. My students thought this was pretty damned funny, and informed me that I should be happy that people think I'm so young. I tell them how old I am, and they don't believe me.
I don't think I look that young, people! But apparently I'm wrong. Before I even started this job, someone at a workshop told me that I should make sure I dress up, because otherwise I would be mistaken for a student. I thought she was crazy. I guess she was right.
Monday, June 1, 2009
plagiarism!
Dudes. One of my students has turned in a final paper - a paper that was not written by them, except that I can't prove it. This paper is graduate-level work, written in perfect science-ese, lacking citations and written in a format that I did not prescribe. Turned in by a student who was failing, and who gave a presentation on this topic that largely consisted of "I don't really understand this..".
Crap! If I can't prove they plagiarized, I can't justify giving them a low enough grade to fail them in the course. This pisses me off something fierce.
Many people tell me that passing them with a D- is just as bad as failing them. I guess. But I have an over-developed sense of fairness and justice, so it still rankles.
In other news, Partner and I have now been together for six years. And we still put up with each other. He even bought a car while I was gone, and as sneaky as that might be it was still ok, because he was just being a responsible deal-hunting guy. Too bad the new car has now been hailed upon. Stupid thunderstorms!
Happy Anniversary to us!
Crap! If I can't prove they plagiarized, I can't justify giving them a low enough grade to fail them in the course. This pisses me off something fierce.
Many people tell me that passing them with a D- is just as bad as failing them. I guess. But I have an over-developed sense of fairness and justice, so it still rankles.
In other news, Partner and I have now been together for six years. And we still put up with each other. He even bought a car while I was gone, and as sneaky as that might be it was still ok, because he was just being a responsible deal-hunting guy. Too bad the new car has now been hailed upon. Stupid thunderstorms!
Happy Anniversary to us!
Sunday, May 31, 2009
math is important
At the conference I attended recently, I had to fly into a big city and then rent a car to drive to a smaller city (strictly speaking I could have made an attempt to navigate a maze of public transportation options on the weekend when very few things are running...so I went with the car). I set this up online and had my reservation number and such, as usual, and went to find the rental cars at the airport.
I was told that the rental company I had reserved with had no cars left, so they would have me rent from a more expensive company and reimburse my credit card the difference. While this seemed sketchy to me at the time, I didn't have much of an option, so I said fine and got my car and was off.
Fast forward to my return to the airport, just in time to check in and not get yelled at by the people at the counter for being late for an international flight, and I'm returning the rental car. Except that I'm not sure whose return garage I should be entering: the company I theoretically rented from or the one who owns the car? I chose wrong, and caused all kinds of problems. People at various desks told me different things, everyone was confused, and eventually some guy just took the car and drove it back to the other company's area. And they gave me a receipt, so I went back to the ORIGINAL desk to see if that reimbursement they had promised me had actually been applied.
And I'm told that, yes, I had been reimbursed this ginormous sum of money that far surpassed the total expense of the car even at the more expensive rental place. And I said that it sounded like that number was too high, and perhaps they could double check? So the woman, obviously in a hurry to do something else, had me come behind the desk to show me that, SEE, right here is the rate...which was the total bill provided by the other company. And since their rate was only $20/day, I was being reimbursed the difference...between their rate (days x $20) and this crazy thing that they apparently thought was the other company's rate, but which was actually my total bill multiplied by the number of days I had rented the car.
Call me vindictive, but the whole thing had been such a ridiculous and frustrating exercise that I just thanked them and left. I don't really feel bad for taking money from people who won't let me explain why they shouldn't be giving me money. We'll see if they notice.
I was told that the rental company I had reserved with had no cars left, so they would have me rent from a more expensive company and reimburse my credit card the difference. While this seemed sketchy to me at the time, I didn't have much of an option, so I said fine and got my car and was off.
Fast forward to my return to the airport, just in time to check in and not get yelled at by the people at the counter for being late for an international flight, and I'm returning the rental car. Except that I'm not sure whose return garage I should be entering: the company I theoretically rented from or the one who owns the car? I chose wrong, and caused all kinds of problems. People at various desks told me different things, everyone was confused, and eventually some guy just took the car and drove it back to the other company's area. And they gave me a receipt, so I went back to the ORIGINAL desk to see if that reimbursement they had promised me had actually been applied.
And I'm told that, yes, I had been reimbursed this ginormous sum of money that far surpassed the total expense of the car even at the more expensive rental place. And I said that it sounded like that number was too high, and perhaps they could double check? So the woman, obviously in a hurry to do something else, had me come behind the desk to show me that, SEE, right here is the rate...which was the total bill provided by the other company. And since their rate was only $20/day, I was being reimbursed the difference...between their rate (days x $20) and this crazy thing that they apparently thought was the other company's rate, but which was actually my total bill multiplied by the number of days I had rented the car.
Call me vindictive, but the whole thing had been such a ridiculous and frustrating exercise that I just thanked them and left. I don't really feel bad for taking money from people who won't let me explain why they shouldn't be giving me money. We'll see if they notice.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
bits from abroad
I finally had time to pull up a few spreadsheets I need for some ongoing research, which I haven't played with for well over a year. I should apparently open them more often, just so I can remember what the hell is going on in there. Or, I should make less complicated spreadsheets (most likely, neither will be implemented).
I forgot to bring pajamas.
I've taken advantage of the cheaper "on campus housing" option, and while that's just fine in general I am remembering that dorm rooms are not that fabulous, and one of the major downsides is the lack of temperature control.
My students have largely chosen my few days out of town to begin their papers and projects. Thus my inbox is suddenly full of "oh crap I don't actually know what I'm doing!". Sigh.
If my lungs allow, I might do some nice hikes/walks. There are several options for some "nature" near here.
I forgot to bring pajamas.
I've taken advantage of the cheaper "on campus housing" option, and while that's just fine in general I am remembering that dorm rooms are not that fabulous, and one of the major downsides is the lack of temperature control.
My students have largely chosen my few days out of town to begin their papers and projects. Thus my inbox is suddenly full of "oh crap I don't actually know what I'm doing!". Sigh.
If my lungs allow, I might do some nice hikes/walks. There are several options for some "nature" near here.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
disappearances
The poor blog has been ignored lately - more so than any month since March of last year, when I first threw a few random thoughts onto Blogger. I think things have been less random more recently, but perhaps also very boring. Eh.
Since I don't seem to be the only one neglecting the interwebs at this time of year, I have no guilt, but I'm also off to a conference next week and will be in grading jail right afterward, so things will probably remain relatively quiet(er).
Random recent events include:
- I finally committed to an itinerary for one project and decided to give up on another for this year. It is not my job to play a supporting role for someone else's grad student if they can't even email me with logistics in a timely manner. I will still be outta here for most of the summer, though, which is both exciting and sad. Too bad Partner is employed! (not really...but it would be cool if he could come).
- awesome senior is doing cool stuff with new expensive toys I bought. Fun, yet mostly for them and not for me.
- I am still not ready for this upcoming conference, but hope that I will have enough down time prior to my presentation that I might be ready by the time I need to be. I've never done that before - last minute tweaks, yes, but writing and potentially doing some stats in the hotel, no. A first time for everything, I guess.
- Sick! The past week has been tedious and snotty - and now there are evil beings living in my lung spaces. Get out! I'm going to be leaving an entire half of my month to sloth between being sick and traveling. I'm going to have to try to get in shape again in early June before heading into the field!
Since I don't seem to be the only one neglecting the interwebs at this time of year, I have no guilt, but I'm also off to a conference next week and will be in grading jail right afterward, so things will probably remain relatively quiet(er).
Random recent events include:
- I finally committed to an itinerary for one project and decided to give up on another for this year. It is not my job to play a supporting role for someone else's grad student if they can't even email me with logistics in a timely manner. I will still be outta here for most of the summer, though, which is both exciting and sad. Too bad Partner is employed! (not really...but it would be cool if he could come).
- awesome senior is doing cool stuff with new expensive toys I bought. Fun, yet mostly for them and not for me.
- I am still not ready for this upcoming conference, but hope that I will have enough down time prior to my presentation that I might be ready by the time I need to be. I've never done that before - last minute tweaks, yes, but writing and potentially doing some stats in the hotel, no. A first time for everything, I guess.
- Sick! The past week has been tedious and snotty - and now there are evil beings living in my lung spaces. Get out! I'm going to be leaving an entire half of my month to sloth between being sick and traveling. I'm going to have to try to get in shape again in early June before heading into the field!
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