Danielle Blog

Approaching Easter break

Another week has passed.  This one, work-wise, was much better than the last.

I only had one night where I stayed up until midnight doing something that I thought was going to take a couple of hours – that turned into 4.  It was preparing the lab manual for the week, again, that took so much time.  So, relatively enjoyable work, but work, nonetheless.

We had a snow day on Tuesday. Of course, the sucky part is that they didn’t cancel classes until I’d driven all the way up to school through the really dangerous part.  My drive is usually 1.5 h, so snow really tacks on another chunk.  And this time, I saw a car UPSIDE DOWN on the side of the road.  That is the first time I’ve seen one upside down due to sliding off of the road.  Pretty scary shit.

I was told by some faculty that I could’ve canceled my class on my own and not wait for the official school closing.  But, of course, I didn’t know that until after the fact.  I figured that would be frowned upon.  And being an adjunct, I feel I  have to be particularly careful of holding classes at all times.

Anyway, the timing was such that we didn’t have molecular biology lab this week, which was somewhat of a blessing.

AND next week, we don’t have classes on Thursday and Friday, or the Monday after Easter – have I mentioned this already?  I think I might have.  It shows you just how much I’m looking forward to this break!  God bless religious schools that value the religious holidays.  I’m looking forward to attending Good Friday service at my church.  Last year, it was really moving.

In other news, I did a playdough modeling exercise of the lac operon with my molecular biology students this week.  I think they learned from it.  I realized that a bunch of them missed a critical question on a quiz related to the lac operon, and I needed to do SOMEthing to cement it in their heads.  On my drive in, I was dwelling on this, and came up with the modeling exercise.

This is part of the reason I don’t mind my commute.  People keep asking me how I’m handling it.  I suppose I am one of those strange people that needs a LOT of time to process my day and brainstorm upcoming ideas.  Without that time, my teaching and exam designs would be a lot different.

More importantly though, it is 3 hours a day where I listen to music.  People also think that I’d need to spend my commute listening to books on tape to keep from getting bored.  But what they don’t realize, and what is so hard to put into words, is just how critical music is to my life and happiness.  I’ll admit, this is something that drew me to lab work.  I love that I can do work and listen to music while doing it.  It really changes my perspective and my satisfaction with my day.  Every now and then, I can grade papers while listening to music.  But it is hard, because I have to block out the words to the songs.  And I haven’t found (although I haven’t searched too hard) for instrumental music that works for me.  Techno is too repetitious and almost anxiety-inducing.  And symphonic/orchestral music doesn’t really do it for me most of the time.  I kinda like Enya/new age…. maybe I should look into that more seriously.

The one other thing that was nice this week, was that I got together with the 2 other “young” female faculty in my department to celebrate my b-day.  We went out for drinks/supper/snacks after our departmental meeting.  It has been a good bonding and venting time.  I would like to do it more, but one of them has kids that she has to pick up from daycare and school.  So, it is trickier for her.  But the same woman is the model that the department is using to revise 3rd year review and tenure requirements, so it is good to hear her perspective about how she handles things related to teaching and research.   I try to absorb as much experience as I can from my colleagues.

Well, I guess that is all for this week.

Keep happy thoughts up for SeaQueen.  She is in the final weeks of finishing the writing of her thesis for her PhD.  She has a really tough time right now.  And she is under the gun to make an April deadline so that she can get her hood at commencement this Spring.