I need to pack up and head to school here shortly. So, this has to be a bit less edited and rough. I have an 8:00 on M, W, F so I try to be at work around 7:00 at this point. Mainly, because there always seems to be something that I need to print out or copy or whatever before I head off to class.
It is fun to be back in the classroom. But I’ve never found going over the syllabus to be a whole lot of fun. I try to emphasize the good parts with enthusiasm “Here are the study tips!” “e-mail me if you want to meet with me!” “Here is a cool video about Biology (that also demonstrates how to use the website for the texbook)!” But it is hard to put a smiley face on cheating and plagiarism. That brings to mind an interesting moment. My 10:30 M, W, F class are pretty much all first year students that were alert and stayed with me even through the details. But the room was really hot; something was going on with the air system, and although it had been reported already, it hadn’t gotten fixed. So, at about the 30 minute mark, students were fading.
And then I started explaining some of the common forms of cheating and the penalties for cheating. Boy did they wake up quickly at the mention of expulsion! ha! I had all eyes on me at that point.
Anyway, I did an in-class activity that was developed by some Profs. at the University of Minnesota Duluth yesterday to teach the scientific method. It was good in that students were participating by throwing out ideas when I asked questions; that can be a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge barrier in any classroom. They have to feel like it is safe or okay to “say something stupid” (their misconception, not mine). But it was bad in that I felt really disorganized with how it went. I was trying to use their powerpoint that I had modified, and there wasn’t enough room for me to write additional explanations.
So, it was sort of a hit-or-miss day.
It also took way longer than I’d planned, which was a bummer.
Oh well. You live, you learn. Part of teaching is trying new things out and sometimes watching them bomb. I’ll see how they do on the quiz. Maybe they still got some of the key concepts.
Well, I’m off to teach some more! See ya later, alligator.
As the title indicates, I have officially reported back to school (Tuesday, Aug 17th). This means that I basically arrived at 8:30 just prior to the President’s welcome for new faculty and staff by more or less skipping the breakfast. And walked out to my car at something like 7:15.
Ah yes. It begins.
People who have been at this school for years kept trying to console any of us new folk with comments about how they know sitting in orientation meetings all day is really awful. But I guess I’m a total goof and/or alien, because I actually like this kind of stuff. After two years of teaching where I felt like I didn’t know as much as I would’ve liked about a) what had been going on and/or any new initiatives at school and b) where to go when certain problems arose, it was a relief to get to meet those people and ask my questions. I really hope that the other people in my orientation “class” don’t think of me as “that woman who always asked questions.” But honestly, I have found some of this info to be extremely helpful, and now was my chance to get it more easily than spending precious time cruising the website.
Other than that, my exciting news is that on Thursday of last week, I met with my department chair and the associate provost – who used to be the chem dept chair – to go over what I had prepared for talking to our Development office (i.e. fundraising) for my research needs. The grand total is just over $80,000, which was rather daunting until I heard that in chemistry, they need a certain piece of equipment that might cost them $200,000. With that in mind, my total didn’t seem quite so outrageous to either of them.
Anyway, the dept chair and the associate provost were very helpful and gave me places to tweak my cover letter/case statement. That also gave me places where I needed to change my powerpoint presentation before I met with Development on Monday of this week.
Monday, I met with the director of Development and she is SUPER excited about my research. She asked lots of questions and became really passionate about the topic. yay! She was also REALLY excited at all of the material I was providing to them.
I was under the impression that Development was mainly going to ask private donors for the funds for my project. So, I’d tailored a lot of the information that way. However, after hearing about my needs, she decided that they would just go ahead and contract out for a grant to be written. The school cannot afford a full-time grant writer, so this is the option that makes the most sense. During my job offer negotiations, the school had talked about contracting out with a grant writing agency to a) find sources of funding that would apply to my research and b) help write a grant. I hadn’t realized it was such a strong commitment, on their part, to do this, because it wasn’t really in my written offer. However, evidently our oral discussion was more solid than I’d realized; which is also really fantastic. There is pretty much no way that I could write a grant on my own during the school year for that kind of money; so this is key to getting my lab started.
Oh and as an aside, I am evidently “known” now as being a “tough negotiator.” Which is rather funny to me, since I never viewed myself that way. I guess all of those conversations with HB about his work projects and such, not to mention the support of some of you who talked to me outside of the blogosphere, had more of an influence than I’d realized!
She emailed the grant writing agency my documents (they are based in DC), and talked to them on the phone yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, I got an email that a particular grant-writer has been assigned to my work; this was very quick work on their part! I am supposed to hear about their ideas for funding agencies on Sept 3rd – which is really fast!
I know that this is going to add to my work load immensely this year. But when getting a lab up and running, it is sort of now or never.
I’m super psyched about this! And it totally makes up for the long hours. So, there you have it, the latest update on my work life.
I still have every intention of posting my “Fun Outings with Mom and Dad – part 2″ to follow-up on the part 1. But currently I’m uploading HD video to Flickr which is sucking up all of my bandwidth and my patience for navigating around the internet. Thus, it will have to wait.
Now, WHY am I uploading video to Flickr, you may ask?
Well, as it turns out, today is my Dad’s 65th birthday! Yes, this is the milestone that is allowing him to retire in a couple of weeks! wooooooooooooo hooooooooooooo for Dad!
And it won’t be long until Mom and Dad live here and I see them quite regularly; or at least, I hope to see them regularly.
Happy 65th Birthday, Dad!!
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In other news, the kinds of things that are going on with me:
1) I’m trying to compile all of my research needs (i.e. supplies and equipment). Right now, I have an excel file with at least 6 sheets, and the total is at $45,000 spread out over 3 years. To give you a point of reference, some schools will offer $25k to $75k as start-up money for a new faculty member’s research without even knowing what you want to buy. Instead, I’m not getting any start-up money, and I’m writing this up so that our development office can go out and ask private donors for money.
After talking to a mentor of mine at school who has been around the school for quite some time (and received the no-strings-attached start-up money) he suggested I go ahead and ask for new versions of some of the ancient stuff that we already have. This would be things like a new -80C freezer (around $12k) and a new microcentrifuge.
When I was looking for a refrigerated microcentrifuge for spinning down small tubes in the 1.5 ml range. I found this woooooooooooooooooooonderful new centrifuge by Eppendorf which can do small tubes, as expected, but can also, surprisingly do 6, 15 ml or 50 ml tubes. And with alternate rotors, can spin down microplates, PCR plates, PCR strips and just on and on! It is intended to be an economical alternative to buying two separate centrifuges; usually, a lab has to have one centrifuge for big tubes and one for small tubes/plates etc.
OMG. I really, really want that centrifuge.
How many bake sales would it take to buy this centrifuge, I wonder? hmmmm…. probably too many.
My mentor’s suggestion is that the worse they can do is say no and that I might as well ask.
2) Now I have to write a cover letter/case statement for why I need this stuff. It is nothing like writing a real grant, but it is still time consuming. Once I write it, my mentor suggests that I get input from everyone in the dept (all 5 people). Which, again, is easy, since it is only 5 people. But that will also require at least 5 meetings during a time when most people are on vacation.
3) In the meantime, I’m feeling the pressure that I ought to be working on my syllabi and first days of lecture. Classes don’t start until the 24th, so really, I have quite a bit of time. Last year, I went on vacation to Port Aransas just prior to the start of classes. Consequently, I wrote my syllabus 3 days before classes started; it turned out fine. So, I’m trying to console myself with that.
4) I have exciting news on the music front! In a few weeks, I am going to join a really awesome Praise Band at my newly-found church! Joining this band has been a bit tougher than what it would be if I’d gone to one of the other churches that I’ve found down here. Other churches have sort of been desperate for vocalists. The church that I’m going to be singing at has really high standards and more than just me who wants to join it. So, I had to prove to the director that my voice is good enough, my spirit is in the right place (so to speak), I’m better than the other people, and I’m responsible enough to be in the band. He has gotten burned in the past by someone who wouldn’t show up for church every now and then when she was scheduled; thus, my being dedicated is a significant part of his willingness to let me join. Well, that and my voice, of course.
I’ll sing solos every now and then, maybe duets, but I’ll mostly be doing back-up harmonies. Since I looooooooooooooove singing harmonies, I think that this will be a perfect fit.
And, better yet, the pastor is awesome, awesome, awesome. AND it is UCC (United Church of Christ).
I grew up Disciples of Christ which merged with the UCC quite some time ago. Anytime I’ve moved, I’ve always hoped to find a UCC church that has good music and good sermons, but it has been a bit hit or miss. I’ve ended up at at a Methodist church and, most recently, a Lutheran church, instead.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the UCC, it is pretty much the most liberal Protestant denomination out there. They were the first to ordain female ministers, the first to allow openly homosexual ministers to be ordained, and they have always been at the forefront of ways to be accepting of all people (hence the “united” part of the name). This fits with how I view what Jesus was trying to accomplish in his own ministry when he was here on Earth; so it is a better fit for me than any other denomination.
Well, I think that is enough for now. I ought to get ready to go into school and work on this cover letter/case statement. And maybe I’ll work on my syllabus when I need a “break” from it.
Well, I am officially here according to the state and my school.
For the state: I have my plates and driver’s license.
For the school: I have my ID card/number, lots and lots of HR paperwork completed, an email address, and (just yesterday) a phone number!
My office at school is coming together. I have the “before” pics, but I am waiting to post them until I do the “after” pics.
Everyone is being super friendly and helpful. A lot of the students who are doing research for the summer and are around and being introduced to me remember me from my genetics lecture (in class). Thus far, only faculty remember my seminar, but if this school is anything like my last school, there are students who remember it who are too shy to say anything about it.
I have a really great room for my lab space, but it needs a big cleaning. It is a place where a handful of old computer monitors have been “stored.” Some extra chairs and a couple of classroom desks are also in there.
However, the admin is super about getting work orders in so that stuff gets removed ASAP. And a summer research student is going to help me clean up the lab space during incubations in his experiments. He is doing PCR, so he has a 4 hour block of time when he is free on a fairly regular basis.
I’m working with IT to get the right kind of tablet PC for my teaching. I cannot use an iPad, because I have to run powerpoint on it, and the iPad cannot run Microsoft products. The school has a discount with Dell (big surprise there), but the one that they had gotten for me to try out, and I tried yesterday, has an awful touchscreen for writing. These weird lines shoot off to the left when I write on a powerpoint presentation slide. Perhaps it is a setting issue, but if the reviews on the Dell website are to be believed, it is an inherent flaw in Dell’s choice of touch screen technology.
I used a Fujitsu at my last school. Evidently, they pioneered a lot of the touch screen technology for tablets.
Here is the short-ish video that I took of me using it while videotaping myself (one-handed). Not all that exciting, but since I taped it, I feel like I’ve got to do something with it.
I guess that is it for now. Thus far, I’m unaffected by the hurricane; it is just rainy here.
I’m off work for Easter Break; we get Thurs, Fri, and Mon off! Consequently, I feel that I have a bit more time to blog right now.
One key thing that has happened since my last post is that we finally submitted my first-author manuscript from the work I did as a post-doc to the Journal of Neuroscience! Finally! The lab was trying to do some additional experiments after I left to add to it, and it took until now to decide that some of them were just not going to work, and others were able to work. Of course, this is not the end of that, because the manuscript will have to be reviewed and the reviewers always want something changed. We just hope it is minor and not additional experiments!
A second key activity is that as part of Lent, my church has a day where they try to get everyone involved in service. We ended up having about 230 people participate in a variety of projects. I was one of the organizers to have a small musical concert at an assisted living facility. It was a lot of fun to sing some of my favorite songs. And the residents were soooooooooooo appreciative. This idea is something that I hope to take with me for a future church. It requires so little time from us, but it is so meaningful.
Last night, I sang and was one of the readers of the scripture in John that talks about the events leading up to and including the crucifixion. Good Friday and Easter are always more meaningful for me than Christmas. I love the festivities of Christmas, don’t get me wrong. But Christianity is really all about the events that occur during Lent. And the songs are heart-wrenching on Good Friday.
The readings were moving, but it was really uncomfortable to be one of the people in the crowd yelling “Crucify him!” But I think that is part of the point; we are supposed to be uncomfortable.
For Easter, I bought a very small bouquet of flowers on Wed night to enjoy while I’m here at home on break. I hope to take some photos of them later. Right now, I’m committed to getting the grading of exams done today. And I’m trying to get them done in time to see a 1:00ish showing of How to Train a Dragon in 3-D. I think I’ll be able to do that.
These flowers were ordered for me before I wrote my post where I mentioned that I hadn’t bought flowers for myself. When Texas Seestor saw my comment, she got a good chuckle out of it, because unbeknownst to me, she had gone in with Mom and Dad to buy me this bouquet!
It was delivered this afternoon, and as you can see, is just gorgeous!
I’ll be taking more photos soon. But for now, this is what I was able to shoot quickly with my normal lens.
It is official! I have been offered and I have accepted a job offer for a tenure-track position in biology at a small liberal arts school in Texas!!!
wooooooooooooooo hooooooooooooooooo
The image above is something I created to make notecards on Snapfish. I am going to send cards to people at my future school who are in my new department, were on the search committee, the provost, the president, and the woman in development (i.e. will be helping me get money for research). The school colors are black and gold, and I thought they might enjoy a card with a flower in the school colors. So I searched my numerous flower photos in my huuuuuuuuuuge iPhoto library (currently 9,800+ photos) for a yellow flower and can you believe that I found this tulip that actually has a black center in it too???!!!
Was this meant to be, or what? I took that photo in April 2007.
I really just thought I’d use a daylily that was yellowish green. But when I saw this and popped it on the design, I realized it was the right one.
Note, I can’t take credit for the idea for the background. Something similar was on Snapfish. I just copied it in the colors of my choice with the sizing of borders and lines of my choice.
Anyway, about the job:
Location: about 45 min (?) from Texas Seestor’s house! Maybe 30 min from where I might live (?). You know what this means? It means that I will get to see her, her hubby, and my two darling nieces on a regular basis!
Also, mom and dad are retiring in the area, so I’ll get to see them too! They haven’t picked a house, so it is still a bit up in the air as to how close I’ll live to them. But I have hopes that they will be close!
School: smaller than my current school. But my current school is the largest liberal arts school in the country, because of the way it is designed. (I can’t really say more without giving everything away about where I am, etc.)
People: This is a BIG draw for me. The search committee was actually made up of people all across the school, which is really unusual. There was someone from chemistry, kinesiology, and hispanic studies on it (along with the bio dept chair and another bio person). They all get along really well. We were actually laughing and joking on my phone interview. My on-campus interview was really great too.
There was this whole school reception after my seminar, where I met people from all over the school and everyone just seemed to get along and emphasized how much of a positive aspect that was for them at the school.
As for the students, the professors all had very positive things to say about them. They were shy at first in my guest lecture, but really warmed up to me pretty quickly. So, I think that we will all get along well.
Courses: This is the other main draw for me. I’m was hired to teach a course in one of my specialties: molecular biology/molecular genetics. I’ll also teach their intro bio for majors and a non-majors course. And one semester of anatomy and physiology.
Research: This is the one drawback. There are internal grants that I am almost guaranteed of getting for my usual lab consumables ($3600 a year). But to get some of the larger equipment that I have currently, I’ll write small proposals with the people in the development office. Then they will go to donors in the area and try to get them to donate money to the school/my research. This was the most involved part of my negotiations. I tried to get the school to actually give me start up money. In the end, they just don’t have the funds to offer any start-up money. BUT the provost did have an in-depth conversation with development and the woman in development is pretty confident that we can get the money. If not, I’ll just have to change directions in my research to do less expensive stuff. Which I can do. I just hope to continue doing neuro stuff.
Religion: The school is affiliated with the same denomination of which I am currently a member! This is not the denomination that I grew up with, but it is what I found when I went looking for a local church that has contemporary music. Again, could this be a better fit?
I don’t have flowers to celebrate; with it being Valentine’s day weekend and all, the prices are just jacked up too high. BUT HB bought me chocolate truffle cake! We had some last night while we watched the opening ceremonies and just finished it off (I stopped mid-post to have tea and cake).
Note: I had to take this next photo really fast, because HB was ready to eat the cake when I realized I hadn’t taken any pics!
I have had about 5 sick students per week for about 3 weeks who have had to miss class because of H1N1-like symptoms. Which I suppose isn’t many, considering that I teach over 100 students. But the bad thing, of course, is that when these sick students are “better,” we meet one-on-one to go over what they’ve missed.
I had 2 students who thought they were better and then relapsed really badly. So, I suppose it was inevitable that I’d get sick too. Not to mention that HB appeared to get it. The first time, I thought I’d gotten off easy with a mild case of just headache, sneezing, cough, sore throat and no fever. But this second time, I’ve had the fever part too. Yuck, I say.
I definitely feel more run down this round too. I pretty much slept for most of the day Saturday and Sunday.
I know no one really wants to hear the complaints of someone who is ill, so let me see what else I can tell you….
1) I’ve rediscovered my cache of herbal teas. They aren’t something that I drink much until it gets to be winter. So, it has been nice to delve into them again.
2) I just barely started Dan Brown’s book on HB’s Kindle last night. He had it with him for the weekend, and he had to do some work stuff over the weekend.
The Kindle is interesting. I really like that it is lightweight and I don’t have to use 2 hands to “hold it open.” This is a big advantage when reading while I eat. Usually I have to find something heavy (I use a stapler) to hold open my paperbacks when I eat. I used to have this multi-tool, which HB jokingly referred to as the “book tool”. When I would misplace it, I would utter something along the lines of “Have you seen my book tool?”
It is nice on my lap too. I haven’t quite figured out what happens if the computer chip goes wonky. I think that the books for an account are stored on Amazon…
…. but that always makes me a hint nervous.
I really like that HB isn’t collecting more and more paperback and hardback books that need physical space in our home. We are out of bookshelves. We already have whole containers of his books in our basement storage area. I think we need a library.
Anyway, I’m not very far into the book, so no news on that front. I’ll give you my general opinion without giving anything away once I’ve read it.
3) I have Thursday and Friday off! These are our “free days” which I suppose is like the equivalent of fall break. I will be spending it making sure my job application for the permanent position at school is up to par. oooooooooooo.
I had wanted to post small updates more regularly this summer. But what I’m finding is that during breakfast I’m doing curricular editing. I’ve been doing some editing of the Intro Bio lab manual to incorporate some of what I learned in my upper division molecular bio course this past spring.
I’m super behind on my lab notebook and it is driving me nuts not being able to jot things down in it continuously in lab. I don’t like having it out of date order, so until I get the old things put in, I can’t put new stuff in. That will be a task for this weekend.
I’ve also been spending most of my work-day trying to set up the cell culture side of my lab. For this week, I’ve been dealing with the quality of the water. It is getting really frustrating, because we thought we had it all figured out a few weeks ago. But one of the chemists in the chemistry department introduced a new concern. ugh. I hope to make a final decision today about what we should do. *sigh*
This means that part of my goals for this summer are getting delayed and delayed and probably won’t be met.
However, my students are thinking about doing research during the school year. So, even if they don’t get it done by August 7th (rapidly approaching), we can pick it up again when we are all back for classes around the 20-somethingth. I guess I should figure that date out too.
But in other news, as I type this, I notice that my fingernails are a beautiful purply-pink. I painted them red for the church variety show and have been painting them since with some special nail polish that is devoid of endocrine disruptors (i.e. bad things for your health).
Speaking of endocrine disruptors, this week, we also figured out that you should avoid all odd numbered plastics when microwaving your food and/or storing food and liquids for extended periods of time.
#7, PC (polycarbonate) is the worst. But the other odd-numbered ones have issues too – although the research is in its infancy.
This means that I’m going to try popping my frozen meals (lean cuisine/smart ones) out of their plastic containers and putting them into pyrex to microwave. Not ideal that they’ve been stored in an odd-numbered plastic at all, but what’s a girl to do? There is only so much that can be done until the plastics industry gets on board and changes their composition.
So that is my public safety message for the day. I hope all is going well with you! More from me later.
This week it really hit me, this is the way to do research. I love having my research be about teaching people – in this case, really bright undergrads – how do do research.
I think that the biggest part of it is the teaching and training side of it. I’ve always loved teaching others how to do a particular technique in the lab. But this time, I’m also teaching them the theory behind it And I’m explaining how to decide which parts to change when optimizing an experiment. And we are discussing experimental design. And they are learning even simple things like how to keep a notebook that is actually useful to yourself and to others.
All in all, it is a LOT of fun.
I also think that some of it too, is not having the pressure to produce a certain amount of results in a certain amount of time. Sure, we have a goal to get a certain amount of answers by the end of their 10 weeks. But hey, if we don’t make it, there will be more time to keep working on it.
I wonder how much of it too is that I came up with the research path/topic of research myself. Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I think that our work will have a bigger impact on science than some of the other projects I’ve done. Or maybe it is that I had such high hopes for those other projects, and now, I realize that they didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped.
Anyway, life is good right now. Still crazy busy. But in a good way.
