… sometimes require hard work, at least when the experimental digs are raised garden beds. Seriously, when was the last time you moved 14.5 cubic yards of topsoil and compost? (Not that I did it all myself, of course. My better half did quite a bit of it, and the Free-Ride offspring even pitched in.)
Pictures of the end result of 4 days of dirt-moving labor:
Category Archives: Personal
All that’s left standing between me and my sabbatical.
I’m on sabbatical for academic year 2008-2009. This being summer, you’d think I’d consider the sabbatical officially begun.
Not quite. But I’m getting closer. All that remains:
Blogging and academic research.
As I emerge from my fever, I ponder the latest “Ask a ScienceBlogger” question:
There are many, many academic bloggers out there feverishly blogging about their areas of interest. Still, there are many, many more academics who don’t. So, why do you blog and how does blogging help with your research?
I started this blog as a way to remind my students (and myself) how my subject, the ethical conduct of science, is relevant to lots of things happening in the world right now. Some of those things involve scientists caught misbehaving, or scientific communities trying to figure out what sorts of behavior are productive or destructive. Some of the connections are less obvious, spilling over to issues around education, politics, or the marketplace.
Work-life balance: not seeing integration as intrusion.
For the June edition of Scientiae, Zuska notes:
Taking up space in the world is a Bad Thing for women to do. We waste a lot of energy and time worrying about whether or not we are taking up too much space. …
How do you want to take up space? How do you want to let yourself sprawl, in your professional or personal life?
In the wake of the letter informing me that I had been awarded tenure, I’ve been thinking about sprawl and containment a lot.
A few thoughts on female academics and children.
Since I read it last Friday I have been meaning to say something about this article in Inside Higher Ed about why female academic appear to have lower birthrates than male academics and than female professionals in other fields. Of course, between work and family obligations (and grinding fatigue) it’s taken me until now to get to it.
Is this a clue of some sort?
The letter.
In my faculty mailbox today:
After a review of the tenure evaluations and recommendations of the appropriate committees and administrators … I am pleased to inform you that your service to the University merits the award of tenure. I am also pleased to inform you that you have been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, effective August 21, 2008.
One less thing to worry about while working through the grading.
Sympathy for exam-takers (at least, in some cases).
Another dispatch from grading Hell (fourth circle), in which the reader gains some insight into circumstances which evoke my sympathy, and circumstances which do not.
I have this pedagogical strategy where I try to make my students think more than they have to write. One way this strategy manifests itself is in how I deal with case studies on finals exams.
Strategies for grading fairly.
I am in grading Hell. I expect to be here until at least Memorial Day (Monday), and possibly through Tuesday. (Does that mean I’m actually in grading Purgatory? Please advise.)
Anyway, in a private communication, PhysioProf asked,
As you get grumpier from grading, do you grade harsher?
If I did, that would be an unfortunate situation for those whose papers I get to last, wouldn’t it?
Thankfully for my students, I make serious efforts to apply a uniform level of harshness (or leniency) across the whole pool I’m grading. Here are some of my strategies:
Death is not an option: giving in to temptation.
Which would you totally do if you didn’t know better (and suspect someone might catch you)?
Connections.
Because it strikes me as somehow related to my last post, and because Memorial Day is the Monday after next, I’m recycling a post I wrote last year for WAAGNFNP:
On Memorial Day, because I really needed to do something beside grade papers for awhile, I decided to go to the nursery to buy some plants. First, though, because the kids (who had the day off from school) were actually entertaining themselves pretty well, I poured myself another coffee and decided to actually read some of the articles in The Nation issue on climate change.