I actually have a longish post I’m working on (about whistleblowing), plus a bazillion submissions for the upcoming Skeptics’ Circle to sort through, but between teaching and grading and coaching and making lunches, well, there are a bunch of important tidbits that will fall through the cracks unless I give you a random bullets post:
Category Archives: Personal
The cultivation of girl geeks.
It’s been cool to see my ScienceBlogs sisters Sandy, Shelley, and Tara represent in our little nerd-off. I’m inclined to say this offers at least some evidence that women can get as geeky as the geekiest men. Sadly, there seem still to be many people — including people selling stuff — who just can’t wrap their heads around that idea.
To the Apple Computer Service Department
It is true I found the phone wait-time to even talk to a service representative to be rather long — even when I got up early on a Sunday morning to call you precisely because I wanted to avoid horrendous wait-times. And, your hold music was unnaturally cheery.
It is also true that I question the necessity for the representative to gather the details of my operating system, the additional RAM we installed, and the password I use to install new software on my hard drive when I was calling about a broken hinge on my laptop. (I did not bring this up with the rep on the phone, though, because I imagine she had been trained to fill out every single entry on the intake form, and I didn’t want to increase the next person’s wait-time.)
The shipping box with which I was to return my laptop for repair arrived a day later than I was told it would. (And I am dying to know why the local “authorized Apple repair” shops are no longer allowed to work on iBooks.)
But, really, what I want to tell you, is this: I received the email late Thursday night saying that the repair had been completed and to allow 2 business days for the computer to be shipped back to me. And, the computer arrived Friday morning, ahead of the long weekend.
You guys are the best.
Calls from students to your home.
Since Julie blogged about a call to her home from a student who wanted to add her class, I thought I’d add a story of my own, from waaaay back:
Clues for those who have misplaced their calendars.
Suddenly your inbox is overflowing with messages from people you’ve never met expressing their intense interest in your subject.
And, driving across town in the morning takes twice as long as it did just a month ago.
And, your laptop takes a tumble and breaks a hinge.
Plus, the photocopier at work seems to be involved in a work action (but, curiously, can’t be bothered to make a placard to announce its grievances).
And, the combination-locked computer-enabled classroom is suddenly without its all-important doorstop (which lets students get into the classroom), so you’re reduced to cramming one of your sandals under the door.
Good golly, it must be the beginning of the school year!
In which the blogger has to think about what turns on the manner in which her students address her.
Thanks to all readers who responded with suggestions as to what my students should call me. As a number of you pointed out, what I choose here isn’t just a matter of local custom (there seems not to be a unified custom on this at my university), nor of personal comfort (for me or my students). After all, the form of address is going to play a part in setting the tone for my interaction with my students.
And here, maybe my indecision about the right form of address reflects the fact that I have aims that are potentially in conflict with each other.
What should my students call me?
OK, it’s the time of the semester when I get a bazillion emails from students enrolled in my classes, and students trying to enroll in my classes, and assorted others. And, the emailers each choose a manner of address out of thin air, since usually they haven’t met me yet and have no idea how I prefer to be addressed.
The problem is, I’m not sure how I would prefer to be addressed!
Spatial synchronicity (or, how should I feel about this?)
As I noted earlier, the population density in my office at school decreased enough to free up some room for a couch. The original plan had been to adopt an ugly orange love seat from a colleague’s apartment, but it looks like the UOLS will be going in his office, since the couch he was planning to bring in for himself won’t fit his office.
So, I hied myself to IKEA and bought the maximum amount of couch that would fit in the trunk and folded-down back seat of my car. (If you must know, it’s a Prius. Not cavernous, but good with the mileage.) And seriously, if the flat-packed box of couch pieces had been even half an inch wider, I would not have been able to cram it into my car.
With the kind assistance of two students and a colleague, we got the couch to my office, whipped it out of the box, perused the non-verbal instructions (which seemed to suggest that the people assembling the couch should be naked while doing so — a suggestion that we ignored), and put that couch together. It fit perfectly into the bit of space that had opened up in my office.
Which is to say, that huge amount of extra space I was all excited about getting? Amounts to roughly the back of a Prius. How sad is that?
Random quotations meme.
Because Julie tagged everyone:
The rules: “Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe.”
I’ll add: Go with the first five that work for you (i.e., don’t worry about getting global optima). It took me two bundles of quotations with the randomizer, but here’s what I end up with:
Random bullets (“Is the term actually starting next week?!” version)
*Updating syllabi to reflect the coming semester’s actual meeting days and assignment due dates? Really, really boring. The boredom further propagates when it requires updating a kazillion webpages, then uploading the updates to your site (one at a time, since Fetch thinks it’s cute today to “lose” the connection when you use the feature that lets you set up the whole list of files to “Put” all at once). And don’t get me started on the tedium of undoing the MS Word crappy formatting when you turn your word document into a webpage. I’m guessing there would be buckets of money (plus rose petals and chocolates) for the developer who could provide the mutatis mutandi utility for syllabus and webpage updates.