Stuff They've Said

Milo: I'm faster than a speeding bullet! I can run in front of a speeding bullet! If it's not speeding very fast.

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Nora: Mommy, today at nap I had to wait for a hundred minutes for it to become 3.

Me: Did you not take a nap today?

Nora: No.

Me: Why not?

Nora: Because I had work to do.

Me: What work did you have to do?

Nora: I had to watch after a penny.

(Nora's self-appointed job is to find pennies that are lying around the house and give them to Jake to gather up into a bag. She felt like she needed to keep watch over that penny until nap time was over.)

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Milo: Mommy you need to get a haircut.

(He's said this several times over the last week or two. Who knows why he has such a strong opinion on the matter.)

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Milo (in a mocking tone): Nora's super duper! Nora's super duper!

Nora (pissed off): I AM NOT!!!

My Current Favorite Song

(This week anyway)



Dark room. Black russians. Crazy dancing figures across the way. Teasing about accents turning into a semi-serious discussion about whether "all y'all" is okay. What used to be handshakes have now become hugs. Happy people. That's what this song feels like.

Failure!

So I organized a symposium submission for a big national conference we have every year, and solicited participant papers for it. And the symposium was rejected! This is actually my first rejection ever for this conference. So that really sucked. Also, it sucked because it wasn't a rejection of a personal paper of my own (which I could just keep to myself), it was a rejection of the symposium so I had to share the news with all of the participants.

At the time of submission I could tell it was iffy because one of the participant essays totally didn't fit with the other three. I tried my best to frame the whole thing to connect with that 4th essay, but it was a stretch. A stretch that didn't pay off. So, bummer. As Mentor said, "good thing you have tenure!" (In other words, in the grand scheme of things, who cares?)

True, but it still stings. So since I got an F on conference symposium submissions this year, I had to go to the gym and get an A+ in crossfit class. Like, I had to be the valedictorian of the gym tonight, going faster and harder than ever before. Because, you know...that's healthy.

Then tonight I didn't do any work and instead watched two Star Trek episodes with Jake, and felt better. The end.

We stopped Nora's Prevacid a while back and now, once again, she's complaining about her tummy hurting. She says, "It hurts all the time, even when I'm sleeping." She also complains about her legs hurting a lot. ???? So I'm guessing we will again have to put her on this medicine in a more long term fashion. She has been on Prevacid for a lot of her life, and it always seems to work. Then we always try to take her off of it in the hopes that she's grown out of having reflux problems (and because I don't like the idea of her being on it all the time). But then her complaints about belly pain always return. She no longer does stuff like staying up for hours and then throwing up, like she did as a baby and toddler, but the belly pain seems to be very real.

Funny how tenure doesn't, like, magically fix everything.

But it's still better than not having it.

Just Random Stuff

1) Wow! Milo sure is sensitive today. For instance, my refusal to put his socks on for him upstairs in his bedroom (bring them down here and I'll help you with your socks, I told him) created a massive tantrum of genuine tears and heartbreaking wails. Milo is sick with another cold, so he's tired and cranky. Jake is also sick with this cold, and feels terrible each night with a high fever. Nora...hard to tell if she's still on the old cold or in the throes of the new cold.

2) I am still recovering from the prior cold and am dreading catching the new one, which seems inevitable. I have bronchitis again and this time my doctor gave me an inhaler to use during a coughing fit so that I can get better lung function and avoid the situation where I can't breathe. But I am not really sure how this would work because once that spell starts, there is no chance to breathe in and hold my breath for 10 seconds. Anyway...sometimes I wonder if I have some sort of allergy to something, or something else going on that would explain why a normal cold for everybody else inevitably turns into 3 weeks of bronchitis for me. Hard to say. Doctors aren't super great with big questions like that. I mean, it doesn't seem right to spend half the winter coughing when I've never smoked a day in my life!

But anyway, it is still possible to do the crossfit class with bronchitis. I wouldn't exactly say it was *easy*, but it was okay.

3) So anyway, this morning I was trying to gain some privacy while going to the bathroom, which is pretty impossible around here, and I told Nora to close the door. But Milo (unbeknownst to me) had his thumb in the hinge of the door so when Nora closed the door, his thumb got caught in there. Even worse, I don't think she was able to react right away to open it, so his thumb was caught in there for a long time. It was pretty good and crushed. This could obviously have contributed to Milo's rough day. It looks a little swollen, but he appears to be able to move it around and stuff without any obvious problems, so I don't think it's broken or anything. Still...awful.

4) Yesterday a friend invited me and Jake and some other people to a concert that is happening...tonight. This person obviously does not have kids. (We actually had a sitter last night to go have dinner with some friends, and 2 consecutive nights of sitters with no advanced notice is impossible).

5) Mentor and I suddenly decided to apply for a new grant. I'm super excited about the direction of this grant. It is much more interesting than the prior grants we've applied for together. The only thing worrying me slightly is that it's building off of our current grant, which we have with a 3rd PI, and we're not including the 3rd PI in the new grant. The reason for it isn't personal to the 3rd PI, who is great, it just has to do with the direction that the new grant takes, a direction that's totally different from the 3rd PI's research area so he wouldn't be a fit for the new grant at all. However, I still feel a little awkward about it. But I feel intellectually good about this research direction. This grant we've had with the 3rd PI has been too far afield from my research area to make me happy.

6) I keep wanting to buy some comfy soft pants that are still presentable and structured enough to go to the store in (the bar is pretty low, we're not the east coast here). The only ones I have can't be worn out anymore due to things like bleach stains and Christmas-tree-sap stains. But I feel like I shouldn't buy them now because I am waiting to get into better, trimmer, shape. What is with this weird thing where I only feel justified in buying clothes if my body is currently in a narrow range of acceptability? Well anyway, it's currently out of that range, so I never go ahead and buy the comfy pants.

Miss into Ma'am

Exhaustion and sleeplessness is a marathon. There is no respite from it, no "catching up." For a night owl with children, it is not going to ever get better until the children become adolescent night owls themselves. So that's, like, a decade. That's a marathon.

Before I had kids people called me Miss. After I had kids people call me Ma'am. I don't think it's the pregnancy that aged me so much as the last 4 years of sleep debt.

It's the middle of the night. I'm up because my cough won't let me (or Jake) sleep. Best to try to get some sleep sitting more upright in the living room. I wonder if there is a treatment for chronic recurring bronchitis? I don't want to spend the next 5 months coughing like I did last year.

I was at a conference. Usually I try to use conferences to get some extra sleep, but that seldom works out how I imagine it will. You just don't sleep as well in a hotel bed, and this time, I found myself needing to get up early each morning after late nights. So I got a lot less sleep than normal, but it was totally worth it. It was one of the best conferences ever. One reason was because there was a plenary talk that totally blew my mind and the associated paper is exactly what I needed to clarify and re-orient my research direction. This particular scholar's work has done that for my career in the past. This person is an incredible thinker, it's just amazing.

But aside from that and the other productive and enjoyable intellectual connections with others, the conference was just super awesome for me in terms of connecting up with all of my friends and colleagues. Lots of tenure toasting. I got to spend time with a great friend, which I loved, and catch up with other friends, including one of my former advisees. I spent more time with the delightful people from University 2, and I got to see folks from my own grad student days, and make better friendships with other people. Conferences are so awesome that way because it's like a yearly reunion. You get to connect with your own former grad-student cohort, and with the next generation of your own former grad students turned professors, and with other people you've met over the years...just awesome. I really let go one night and had the most awesomely hilarious (and kinda bizarre) time, although it was painful to stay up until the crack of dawn and then have to get up just a few short hours later to give an 8 a.m. talk.

(I think I'm done celebrating tenure now. It feels like I've fully celebrated the heck out of it at this point.)

Having tenure is starting to sink in in little ways. Like that 8 a.m. talk...I was pretty relaxed about it. I thought, eh, so what if it sucks? I'm tenured. Prior to this, I always felt like every talk had to be awesome, there could be a potential letter writer in any given talk, I needed to present my best side, etc., etc. Now I don't need to do any of that. It still ended up being a good talk, I think, thanks to adrenaline, with a nice-sized audience which impressed me given its early hour on the last day of the conference.

But, you know...I was up until 2 a.m., then up at 6 to prepare for my talk, then somehow never slept on the plane because I was in a middle seat, then went to bed tonight only to be kept up and woken up by my cough, so here it is at 2:30 and I'm still up, somehow, although I'm not sure how this is even physically possible at this point. And tomorrow my full day of work starts at 7 a.m., with no resting in sight. So...yeah. It's a marathon.

Kid Locomotion

Every single morning when we go into preschool, the kids RUN from the door down the hall to their classroom. Every single morning I call out, "Walk, don't run!" and they try to walk, in this bizarre, exaggerated slow series of movements, but they can never make it stick and inevitably break into a run again.

I am much more tolerant than many adults of kids running around. There is a common idea that you're not supposed to run indoors, but really, why? They're a little more likely to trip and fall when running, but my kids are just as likely to do that when walking. Running is natural for them. It seems pretty harmless as behaviors go.

Any time you're in a preschool or an elementary school you'll see that kids are always running everywhere. Kids don't really walk from point A to point B. They always run. At what age do people stop naturally running everywhere? How cool would it be if you went into an office setting and you found adults running around from place to place, the way little kids do?

It's the Little Things

I have a big cup of pennies and today I split them in half for Milo and Nora. They've been playing with the pennies for most of the day, sorting them, counting them, putting them into their trucks, moving them from one truck to another, etc. It's a lot of pennies. Tonight after dinner they decided it would be fun to pour the pennies over each others' heads. This makes a tremendous mess. I was wary but apparently they enjoyed the penny pouring experience, doing it again and again, and then they both had the patience to spend the 5-10 minutes it took each time to gather the pennies back up into their cups. As they gathered them back up for the last time, right before bed, Milo said, "I'm having a wonderful time!"

Who knew that picking up a couple hundred pennies one by one and placing them into a cup could be so fun. This is something that makes it awesome to be three.

Pumpkin Patch

Now that I have tenure, I figure I'm allowed to accompany my kids on a field trip, so today I went along when their class went to a local farm to pick some pumpkins and apples.

Brrrrr! If only we had gone last week during the 70s and 60s weather. Instead we went today, the coldest day of the season so far, and it was in the 40s throughout the morning. Milo and Nora were not psyched about all of the layers I forced them to wear, but we were all glad when we were on our hay ride.

The Undergraduate Experience

Recently a student graduated from one of our department's undergraduate programs; not the program I teach in, but a related one. The student's parents wrote to the chancellor and the provost to complain that the student had, during the entire time in the program, never once taken a course from an actual professor.

Now, the truth of this may be sort of beside the point. I wouldn't be surprised if the student took a number of courses from professors but assumed that they were TAs, especially if the student's instructors were younger, female, or faculty of color. Undergrads are often not very clear on who is a TA and who is a professor. But let's assume for a moment that this was actually true. Our dean wrote to our chair and asked our chair to compose a response to this email.

The chair did some investigating and found that in this program, about 13% of courses are taught by professors and not TAs. So that's a pretty low percentage, and it's probably possible that one could go through without taking a course from a professor.

Why are so many courses taught by TAs?

1) Ten years ago, we were a department of 50 faculty. Now we are a department of 28 faculty. We have had lines cut, and of those lines that still exist, 12 are unfilled. In the meantime, our course commitments have not decreased, so we have as many courses to teach with fewer faculty to teach them. TAs make up the difference.

2) In some areas of our department, the only way graduate students can be funded is through TAships. (In my area, we have research assistantships through grants, but this is not possible for all areas, because federal granting agencies do not fund all types of research). We do not have a block of money from the college or the university or the system or the state to support graduate students. Therefore, we support them with TAships. This encourages courses taught by TAs rather than faculty.

3) As a research institution, our faculty are engaged in research and grant-funded activities, which can include course buyouts. When we buy out from courses, we teach fewer courses. Our buyout money funds TAs to teach the courses instead. The department makes money this way, because you can pay for more TAs to teach more sections with the equivalent chunk of a faculty member's salary.

4) We have both undergraduate and graduate programs. Only professors can teach the doctoral courses, whereas TAs can teach the undergraduate courses. This means that professors end up disproportionally teaching doctoral courses, because nobody else can do this for us. In contrast, a liberal arts college with a primarily (or solely) undergraduate mission means that there will not be doctoral courses, so the faculty will be teaching undergrads. In addition, teaching can be a stronger part of the mission there, as opposed to what occurs at a giant research institution. So if you want your kid to be in classes taught mostly by professors, it's probably a better bet to go to a small liberal arts college, rather than to a university.

There is an assumption that being in a course taught by a professor is better than being in a course taught by a TA, and this is often not the case. TAs are doctoral students who will, in a year or two, themselves be professors. They can often be very strong teachers. Some professors can be terrible teachers. However, I can certainly understand a parent's complaint that his or her child hadn't been able to take courses with professors.

Once upon a time we had a hard-line budget for supporting doctoral students, and didn't have to rely as much on TAships. Once upon a time we had 50 faculty instead of 28 to teach the same number of undergraduate courses. Once upon a time our state's contribution to our operating budget was 3 times as large as it is now. All of these changes result in fewer opportunities for faculty to teach undergrads.

Hipstamatic

I know, everybody and their brother does it, but I can't help it. I'm loving the hipstamatic app.

What Happened

Yesterday I had to teach my undergrad class from 1:30 - 4. I knew the decision was supposed to come between 3:30 and 5:30, so I figured I would be done teaching by then. However, I still had my cell phone in class with me and still felt pretty unsettled throughout class.

At about 3 I saw our chair walk by, but he didn't come into my room. At 3:15 Mentor came in, followed by several colleagues grinning, and he gave me the good news that I had received tenure. All of my undergrads cheered and clapped. The decision had come down earlier than expected, so our chair had called Mentor to tell him to get his butt in here if he wanted to be the one to tell me in person. The news came so unexpectedly early that I was caught off guard. After my colleagues left, my students said, "Why aren't you crying?", but I didn't really know how to react. At that point a group of students was doing a presentation, so I just continued on with class until the end.

After class, in our office suite, our dept. chair came by to congratulate me. He let me know that the decision had been unanimous, which was really nice to hear. It also meant that the committee member who I had been afraid of had even voted for me. A little while later Jake came and picked me up, and we went out for a couple of drinks, before then joining my colleagues for some more drinks. Then we all went across the street to another place for a great meal, with even more drinks, and lots of toasting and celebrating. I had a lot of fun. One of my colleagues congratulated on my making it through this particular committee, whose chair is a hard-core quantitative researcher in economics. I'm glad I hadn't known that ahead of time.

There was a bottle of champagne in our kitchen when we got home; a recently retired professor from my department had brought it over once he heard the news.

I didn't feel any giant sense of relief like I thought I would. I am still waiting for that to kick in, I think. I thought I'd feel that so strongly, but right now I feel a little numb.

Also sick. After taking the kids to school this morning, I fell asleep at home and felt so exhausted and sick that I contemplated canceling this afternoon's grad seminar. In the end, I dragged myself out of bed and to work. When I got to work, I saw that somebody had decorated my office door with the message, "Now you are a permanent member of the [my area] elite!" with giant photos of all of the retired professors from my area, professors who had forged the field itself. Each photo had a funny quote attached to it. On the front door of the suite itself, which has a list of every occupant and his or her title, somebody had changed my title from asst. to assoc.

I got ready to head to my grad seminar class a little early so that I could set up some snacks I had brought in to celebrate. But my colleague stopped me, saying, "Isn't your class not until 1:30?" I explained I wanted to go in a little early, and she said, "I can't let you do that. I'm on the distraction committee." At that point I realized that my sweet and wonderful grad students and post docs and arranged a little surprise. When 1:30 came I went into the room and everybody in our area community was there, along with food and champagne and cake. And a giant sign that said, "Welcome Home." It was actually the "welcome home" message that choked me up a little.

My students had a giant board with a head shot of each member of the divisional committee, along with famous quotes attached to each one. They had "congratulations Amy" slides up on the smart board and the university fight song music playing. I ate cake while wearing a tiara on my head that said "Princess".

I couldn't be more touched by the support of my community and their eagerness to help me mark this event. Last night at dinner there were some times when Mentor and I just looked at each other and grinned and then grinned some more, just so happy. I don't feel like the reality of this decision has set in at all, maybe because I am distracted by being pretty sick, but what I feel right now is incredibly grateful to be a part of this amazing community of people.

Achy

Preschool-borne viruses that attack not only children but also their parents care nothing for the timing of a tenure decision. I suspect I'll be home with Nora tomorrow morning. Jake will take the afternoon shift. Hopefully both Nora and I will feel a little less crummy tomorrow morning...

Minor Annoyances

I am so sick of my kids fighting with each other over every little thing. I am sick of them having 18 fights a nanosecond, sick of the whining, sick sick sick of the fighting. You know, kids, not all siblings fight like this. Just saying.

I just put them to nap half an hour early. So maybe I am a bad mother for making them take a 2.5 hour nap, but I totally don't care. I couldn't take it anymore. Honestly, it does not matter who has a quarter of an inch more of the tablecloth hanging down on their side of the table. That is definitely not an issue worth screaming about.

I was reading a blog about somebody's heating coil in the oven catching on fire. She then googled this issue and found out that a ton of people have experienced this with her particular model of oven. Which happens to be identical to our particular model of oven.

People keep breaking into cars in our neighborhood. Come on, I moved out of Seattle for a reason. (3 break-ins during our first year, each time through a locked car with resulting damage to our car, and it only ended when we installed a flashing light that looked like an alarm. Also, our car at the time was an '87 Toyota Tercel, in other words a piece of junk. So not worth it.) At least they haven't resorted to breaking into locked cars around here, they just open up the unlocked ones, but still. If I'm going to deal with big city hassles like car break-ins, then I should at least get to have a Nordstrom. Or an IKEA.

People aren't going after the stereos, they're taking stuff like change. Damn kids, get off my lawn!

I really need to replace our washer's door seal. Or gasket. Is it called a seal or a gasket? Because I can't figure that out to get the right part, and it's moldy as all hell and it makes our whole basement smell, and it's impossible to properly clean so it needs to be replaced. HUGE problem with front-loading washers. Do not buy a Bosch washer if you don't want to deal with mold and mildew. And then everybody says "don't close the door after the load is done washing", but pardon me if I have been wary of leaving the door to a washing machine open when I had toddlers running around. That thing is the perfect height and size for a little kid to climb into.

Why did I buy the local jar of honey that is a glass jar with no squeezing mechanism? Honey is too messy and sticky to not have a squeeze cap.

2 Days

A couple of days ago, Mentor said, "Are you finding this whole lead-up to tenure anti-climactic now? There was so much activity for so long, but for the past couple of weeks it's just been nothing."

On the contrary. He finds it anti-climactic because the majority of the activity was on his part. It was his job to write my case, his job to vette my case with colleagues, his job to present my case to the department. The preparation of the actual case itself was probably about 10% me, 90% him, and that's no exaggeration. So it was a crapload of work for him, and ever since the case passed through the department it went from frenzied activity to no activity.

Whereas for me, this feels extremely climactic. It's like one of those movies where, to show the passage of time, you see somebody putting big X's on each day of the calendar in sped-up time. I'm mentally crossing off a giant red X on every day of the calendar. Except it's not sped up, it's taking forever. This step is the scary step for me because of all of the situations in the past couple of years in which faculty passed through the department level but then were denied at the divisional level.

There are many people but two in particular who have made a lot of sacrifices and done a lot of things to provide amazing support to me so that I could get tenure. One of those people is Jake. I think about all of the late nights, all of the work trips, the Saturdays at the office, the slack he picked up with the kids so I could get stuff done. Never once has Jake complained about any of that. My goal to get tenure has been his goal as well. It has been our family goal, and Jake has done a lot to help me get there. If I had to do something, and I told Jake it would help my tenure case, he was immediately 100% supportive of it. Even if it meant a lot of hassle for him, like an extra trip (or five). Or him staying home from work with a sick kid because I couldn't afford to. All along, I've been sort of implicitly promising myself that it'll be different after tenure. Then I'll be able to pick up more of the slack sometimes.

It is pretty amazing to have a husband who is basically 100% supportive of my work, even above his own, and who never questions that. It's just natural for him, it's how he's been oriented towards my career from the very beginning. If we need to move somewhere for my job, there is no question we'll go and he will follow. I don't think a lot of women have that.

The other person is Mentor, whose professional and personal support has been so monumental and unwavering over the past 7 years that I don't know how it'd ever be possible to repay such a debt. I never appreciated how much work goes into writing another person's case until I watched him do it for me. But more than writing the case is just the 7 years of advice, help, opportunities passed my way, promotion of my work, offers to collaborate, and unselfish advancement of my own work over his. Not to mention putting up with my stress over it all, especially during those times when we watched our colleagues get denied. So regardless of Thursday's outcome, I will be forever grateful to him. There is no way to ever repay what he's done for me. All I can do is live up to it and turn around and similarly help my more junior colleagues as best I can.

Well, anyway. Thursday. My dept. chair wrote me and said to expect the decision between 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. He will call me. I'm teaching until 4 (undergrads). Mentor wants to be there for the news. Another departmental colleague of mine has arranged a faculty dinner/drinks out that night, and I think (I hope) that it will feel great to be with my colleagues and friends after the decision comes down. Hopefully we'll be celebrating.

October(fest)

Today was Jake's birthday. It was a really beautiful day -- 80 degrees and sunny. It felt so weird to sit outside in shorts watching the kids play in giant piles of leaves. It was also a nice and peaceful day. Jake wanted to have a brunch when his parents visited, so we made an omelette and belgian waffles and coffee cake and bacon. Nora is suddenly eating bacon. And cherry tomatoes.

Jake still isn't old enough to run for President, but he will be in a year.

I bought a couple of child-sized rakes so the kids could help Jake with his leaf raking, and they were a huge hit. The kids spent hours today raking leaves and then playing with their shovels in giant leaf piles. Making a nest, moving the pile around, making a leaf slide, making leaf chairs. All you need for a nice Sunday is warm weather and a giant pile of leaves.

Jake's birthday has never been so warm in my memory. This time of year should be all about knee-high boots and scarves and cable-knit sweaters. But I'm not complaining.

I'm remembering his birthday 7 years ago, when we spent the day in a small town about an hour away that was having its annual Octoberfest celebration. Octoberfest is a really big deal here. His parents were there, along with his aunt and a bunch of his friends, and that night we camped nearby and froze our butts off. I learned that I was in a strange land with its own set of customs, including German drinking songs (I was the only one who didn't know all the words) and polka (I was the only one who didn't know how to polka). That night we had fondue for dinner at a Swiss restaurant. Octoberfest is pretty much all about beer, from what I can tell, and bratwurst, and I don't drink beer or eat bratwurst, but somehow it's fun anyway. Maybe it's all the polka music. This is us 7 years ago on his birthday.

Miscellaneous Stuff and Things and Whatnot

Yesterday was picture day at school. This was enough of a novelty to get Nora to allow me to put her in a dress and to get Milo to allow me to put him in a button-up shirt. (He has about 5 of them. They're all hand-me-downs, all adorable, but in some uncanny way he already knows to protest against wearing them).

Getting these kids to pose or smile properly is just about impossible. Anyway, it's really warm here, like 80 degrees. So it was a beautiful morning.

Milo has a cough and last night I ran the humidifier to help him at night. I learned an important lesson: don't run the humidifier unless it's winter. I had no idea how much more dry it is in the winter, and how much moisture is naturally in the air right now. I had the humidifier on the lowest setting but it drenched his room. Like, puddles of water on his furniture. He woke up at 5 a.m. confused and crying about all of the bizarre fog in his room.

During the 4 days we were gone, half the trees turned. Suddenly it really looks like fall with our trees yellow and orange and falling leaves swirling in the street. And yet, it's 80 degrees out.

I am getting stronger in my cross-fit class! Now I can do things that I couldn't do before, like the two big floor laps of knee-bend squat walking things we do to warm up. Before, I couldn't put my knee all the way to the ground the whole time, but now I can. Also, I can lift heavier weights now. I was kind of concerned that only having this class twice a week would mean that it wasn't frequent enough to see any progress, but I was wrong. I can hold my planks and do some other stuff more easily than some people who have been in the class for a long time, so I think I have a body type that naturally responds well to this type of strength-building stuff.

On the weekends, I run as a way to get in a third day of intense exercise. I have more strength now and more energy so I can end my runs with sprints, which I haven't done in years! Each time I sprint a little longer and a little farther.

I know that only 3 consistent days of hard exercise a week is not that great. But it is what I can fit in for my life right now. There are a number of women I really admire, women who are strong athletes, like the cyclist / biologist who competes in a lot of local races here, or the mom who does triathlons. I can feel lame because I am not like them. But I need to remember that I have kids, and I have a job, and I can't do everything, so hopefully doing something is good enough. Better than doing nothing, I reckon. One big goal is to try to stay strong and somewhat healthy through the cold and flu season this winter, so that I'm not totally knocked out for months at a time like I was last year.

This is the first weekend in a while that doesn't involve travel or a bunch of parties and events. It'll be nice just to chill out and get things done. Milo needs to recover from that cough.

Reflections

We had an interesting trip out to University 2.

I think there are some mixed messages going on. According to my area colleague at U2 and the dept. chair, they have already given me an offer by telling me that they will give me an offer. This doesn't really seem the same as, you know, giving me an actual offer, but I'm not really upset about it. Yesterday I talked with the chair and he indicated that there would be no solid offer (like, with written details with stuff like salary) until I had successfully gone through a tenure review there. Not at my own institution, but at U2, which means soliciting letters again and all that. In return, I explained that I wouldn't solicit letters without a pretty firm indication that I'd go there, and I wouldn't be able to make a decision like that in absence of the details of an offer, including salary and start-up details. The chair seemed to more or less accept this and asked me to basically email him with the details of what I want in my start-up and so forth, and then he'd see if they could provide a contingent offer (contingent on my successfully going through their tenure process).

However I think it will all be moot in the end because I don't really think that there is much available for Jake. We'll see if something materializes for him, but it's not like they have a job ready to go for him or anything. Without a job for Jake, us moving there is a non-option.

It is very interesting to compare U2's attitude towards my sub-area compared to my current university's attitude. At U2, as with many universities, they are excited about my sub-area and are putting resources into building it up. It frankly amazes me that they had me visit last year, decided I'd be cool to try to recruit, and the dean actually agreed to it even though I wouldn't be filling an empty line or anything like that. They created a new line just for me. The chair basically said hey, you can take ages to decide if you want since we're not doing a search. If you want to decide in April, you can. The dean indicated to me that he'd be willing to continue to build this sub-area, as it's one they really value. They can also see the national indications that my sub-area is important and worthy of investment (this is a growing national movement in terms of policy).

What a contrast to my own institution, where our own dean doesn't give a shit about my sub-area, and consistently refuses to support it despite the fact that we are understaffed and worth building because we bring in so much money. This issue with my own dean, combined with the political nonsense (our household take home pay is now down by over 1K/month thanks to the budget repair bill), combined with consistent de-funding of education in my state, makes me dissatisfied with my current position.

The other attractive thing about U2 is my area colleague there, A. His research is so well aligned with mine that it would be exciting to collaborate and to engage with him intellectually. I miss that. They have another new colleague, and her work is also intellectually compatible with ours, and they are hiring yet another colleague (separate from my special hire thing). I miss those very exciting intellectual conversations about my specific research passion. My colleagues here are wonderful, and I love working with them, and Mentor and I do collaborate and write together. But he doesn't not share this same specific research passion that A and I share, and I miss talking about it with somebody. I think working with A would be awesome. He's super smart, and ridiculously productive.

On the other hand, leaving a very well established university, a top department, and a well-known program for a lesser-known program at a lesser-known university wouldn't be easy. I brought this up with A (delicately). I mentioned that I appreciate the interest and attention I get on a national level (at conferences, through invitations, etc.) due simply to my department and university. He said, "Are you sure it's your university? I don't think it's your university, I think it's you personally. You might not realize how well-known you are. And if you came here, to U2, then the same thing would happen and you would attract attention to U2." A was flattering me but I don't think he's totally right. I think it's probably more like 20% me, 80% my university/department. He and I are both in the same place career wise (he just went through tenure last year), and we are getting to be known, but we're not as known as full professors like Mentor, much less big huge famous near-retirement people like the guy who tried to recruit me last year.

So going to U2 would be about building. It'd be about program building at a place that is very dynamic, with tons of administrative support, a feeling of excitement about what we do, and a pretty young and energetic group of fellow researchers. Where I am now is not about building, it's more about continuing along on the reputation and history of our area -- a solid, 30-year history. Not that we're stagnating; we all have extremely active research programs and Mentor has grown really quite famous in the last 5 years or so. But it's not the same as U2, not as exuberant. We're solid. They're (maybe) up and coming.

Anyway, it's kind of moot, right? Because I don't think there will be a job for Jake.

Jake did see our dream house. I couldn't see it because of a meeting but he took a lot of video and it really is a dream house. It's the most beautiful thing in the world. That's the other thing about U2; it's in an area that is spectacularly beautiful. I just can't get over how pretty it is. I felt like my eyes were twice as big any time we went anywhere because I was so busy trying to drink it all in. I mean, even just your typical trip to the grocery store is breathtakingly beautiful.

Where I am now has its own loveliness, but it's the midwest. It's flat. Out there it's all hills and mountains covered with trees and lush greenery. I think that different people have different attractions to nature and scenery and climate. For some, the desert is stunningly beautiful with its vistas and rock formations and blooming cacti. For some, the huge snow-capped mountains out west with evergreens all over the place represents the most beautiful scenery. For some, the gentle plains of the midwest feels like home. I can appreciate all of these things but they don't hit me the way this scenery hits me. For me, apparently, what moves me the most is the rolling hills and mountains of appalachia, the tree-covered vistas of the eastern states, the brooks and pastures against the backdrop of woods, and the historic architecture of revolution-era states. That stuff feels really right to me. Maybe it's due to my family origins coming from that part of the country? I don't know. It's just the way I am.

However. U2's town is small. Like, really small. Way, way, way smaller than my current town. It has about 50K people and that's counting the 30K undergrads. Its main street downtown is about 2 blocks long. Instead of the several hundred restaurants we have here, they have maybe...10? Maybe 20 counting places like Chipotle. I mean, it's small. I think, maybe, too small. That's why the whole job-for-Jake thing matters so much, because it's not like he could just go there and find something, the way he could in a city.

When I was there, I had a talk with this old gentleman who has been at the university for 42 years. (He's probably in his seventies). He is a native of New Orleans. He wears bow ties. He is actually a prolific researcher who has won a number of writing awards and teaching awards. But he is an amazingly perceptive man, and my talk with him was really profound for me. For one thing, he is so perceptive that I really only had to hint at some of my issues and concerns and he was able to then take it and run with it, elaborating the point perfectly with a frankness I wouldn't have dared use myself. He understood my issues because U2 is in the south. As Professor bow tie put it, this brings up a number of things: Rebel flags. Living in the past. Rednecks. Guns. Evangelicalism. Hostility to outsiders. Ostracism of kids who don't go to church. I didn't say any of those things, I just hesitantly mentioned that we currently live in a different part of the country, and there would perhaps be a culture shift, and he took it and ran with it. Then he gave me his take on it. I was so impressed with his discussion.

(Also to clarify, I don't think the south is all of those things, or only those things. He was just giving voice to the most extreme version of a set of fears like that; it doesn't represent my beliefs about the south. But I have little experience with the south and many questions and concerns.)

Professor bow tie sort of speaks in allegories sometimes, which I think you're entitled to do when you reach his age, and he told me a story about a couple moving to a new town. I won't try to repeat it here because it would be lost in translation, but the basic point of it, which I found to be very moving, was that you take who you are and how you approach things to any new location, and there is joy (or sorrow) to be found anywhere no matter where you go. Even though I don't think this is absolutely true regardless of location -- I would hate the desert no matter what -- it's definitely true for this location, which has many wonderful things about it, and some drawbacks as well. Anyway, he told it so beautifully that it choked me up, as well as him.

Later that night, Jake and I went out with A and another new colleague in our sub-area, and I told them how much that discussion with Professor bow tie meant to me. A said, "He hypnotized you, didn't he. Did that bow tie start spinning?" And perhaps he did.

Even later that night, after dinner and wine and beer with A and the new colleague, and a stroll down to a pub for some more drinks, the air thick with ambiance, I knew that Jake and I would have friends at U2. We had a fabulous time with them, the kind of time where you laugh so hard for so long that your belly hurts.

So, it was a good trip, and I'm glad I went. It clarified some things for me. After my talk with Professor bow tie, I better understood my own excitement and reluctance, my sense of push-pull with this idea of going to U2. I realized I had not been focusing as heavily on one thing I can't ignore, and that is my true love and affection for my current town. My institution, dean, and governor keep pissing me off, but I feel very attached here. I truly, truly love it here and leaving would feel like a break up, it would be something to mourn. I am not anxious to leave.

26 Million Dollars

That's how much our little area-specific group has produced in grant money in the past 10 years. Will this be an argument that sways the dean at all to approve another position? I don't think so, but Mentor is trying. The dean knows that we pay for ourselves when she approves a position, but this hasn't resulted in her agreeing to new lines. We ask every year. I have finally given up. Mentor never gives up.

He also produced a table of the top 11 doctoral programs in our area (we are #5), the number of faculty in each program, and whether they're hiring this year. Out of the top 11, we are second to lowest in number of faculty at 4 faculty. This sort of fudges the numbers, since we do have two more affiliated faculty in different departments, but okay. The only program with fewer faculty is Berkeley, ranked #9, at 3 faculty. The highest number of faculty is 15, at the second-ranked program (AND they are hiring 2 more positions this year). Most programs have 6-8 faculty. I also don't think any of this will matter to the dean, but it has definitely served to depress me, if nothing else...

Near the Appalachian Trail

Today we went on a nice little 4-mile hike up to a waterfall. Huge waterfall! Somebody was asking me about my hiking boots and I said that I'd had them forever, since the 90s. Which made itself apparent as we were on the last mile. My feet started feeling a little wet, and I stopped to examine my boots and saw that the soles had fallen off on both of them! They just disintegrated as I was walking. More room in my suitcase now.

Today we were skyping with Milo and Nora but then Nora started to cry because she missed me. So...that sucked. The skyping might have made it worse. Maybe talking on the phone is better.