Psychological milestone for green assistant prof

Two of my papers have been cited by people I don't even know. (Previous citations were from people who were somehow involved in the research. So they don't count.)

HA.

Readin'. Writin'.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the reading and writing skills of my students - and how said skills are generally lacking.

My assessment of their reading is probably not so much "they aren't good at it" but rather "they never do it, for neither pleasure nor education nor work." Obviously this is a generalization. Every semester I get at least one good writer, and at least one student that I know reads things from time to time, either the newspaper or some science fiction novels or perhaps even some classic literature.

My assessment of their poor writing comes almost exclusively from looking at the technical memos that I insist accompany all of their computational assignments. The technical memos are supposed to explain the premise, methods, assumptions, and results of their calculations, as well as giving recommended practical solutions to the problem in question. The students' memos are largely terrible, and not just in a way that I think I could train out of them (discipline-specific conventions that just take time to learn) but in a way that should have been trained out of them already (how to recognize and avoid sentence fragments, etc.).

Let's assume these issues are partly related. I will lump them into the same category and say the students are generally opposed to the written word - theirs or someone else's.

I was discussing this with a colleague of mine in the education college, and she pointed out that perhaps some of the reading-aversion is because my students are primarily male, and that she recently read a book which posits that when we teach kids to read, and to analyze writing, it's usually in a way that implies they need to have some kind of emotional connection to the writing, and that's a big turnoff to the typical young man. I can see this. It's why I hated reading things for English classes in high school and college myself. It didn't seem to have any practical value to me to discuss how I FELT about a book/poem/story. My husband, by the way, thought this was crap, though he himself does not like to read (but because he thinks he is too slow at it).

I once was at a meeting with some other faculty in my discipline and we were talking about some really interactive teaching, and one of the profs said, "In my course we have great discussions, but we're able to do that because the students read the material before they get to class." I asked her how she was able to get them to read, and she said, "I just expect them to." I am pretty sure my expectations would have no such magic effect on my students, and actually I kind of thought her response was code for "Because I am a GREAT teacher and you are not, duh." Also, my students are generally very, VERY bristley about the money it is costing them to attend college, and so a large number of them refuse to buy textbooks, even when it puts them at a significant disadvantage in terms of getting required work done.

And the writing . . . cripes. Yesterday as I was grading another stack of mediocrity, I was wondering why I don't feel like they're improving in quality at all, even after five technical memo assignments returned to them with comments and grades. For some of them, maybe most of them, I suspect they just don't care. In which case, should I feel free to just slap a number grade on there and not spend the time to give constructive feedback? As it is I tend to focus on just a few key things or else I would be writing all over the paper, but even that sucks up time.

I also am not sure if they don't care because (a) they think I am just a bit of a nutcase in making them WRITE in a technical class, and they just want to pass and graduate and they don't care to put any time into improvement, and/or (b) they do not believe me when I say that being able to communicate technical material in written form is something that most people have to do on the job, in one way or another. Or maybe it's something else.

But, WOW, does it make me not want to ask for the memos anymore.

Olympic dreams

If I were an Olympic gold medalist, no doubt I would tear up on the podium as they played my national anthem, and I would be full of both pride and humility . . . but I would also be a little pissed that my medal looked like a CD.

On an education-related note, I appreciate this quote from US Education Secretary Margaret Spellings: "Our students cannot 'cram' overnight for success any more than a skier or figure skater can sit on the couch for four years and then hope to compete in the Winter Olympics."

Graduate Students

Grad students are critical to my research success. But they really stress me out. It's not just the students themselves, it's the whole system:

1. When you have a project ($), you have to scrounge around for a student, and you may not find one that you like that's a good match.
2. When you find one you like that's a good match, you may not have the money.
3. When you have the money and a student, the timing may be weird. Like the money runs from March to March, but the student runs on the academic year. Etc.

THEN, should all the planets align and you can get the administrative details to work out, you have to figure out how to get their best work out of them. Some students need a lot of direction, some students hardly need any (and you maybe it's a struggle to squeeze info out of them), some students need moral support so you have to be a cheerleader for them, some blah blah blah. I find this a tremendous stressor and challenge. It literally keeps me up at night.

I wonder about my own advisors from grad school. Did I keep them up at night? Did they agonize over how to mentor me? Did they ever think about it? Was I a challenge? Did I stress them out?

Metrosexuality.

I went to one of the campus cafes for lunch, and a group of four guy students were sitting at the next table, talking about video games and beer and which bars have the hottest chicks. And then:

Guy 1: Dude, did you straighten your hair? It looks good.
Guy 2: Yeah, with a straight iron this morning. Thanks.
Guy 3: Isn't it weird how you can perm your hair, and the curls last for months, but straightening just lasts for like, a day?
Guy 1: No, dude, if you get it chemically straightened it's like a perm but straight.
Guy 4: But that costs a sh**load.
Guy 3: Like, how much?
Guy 4: I don't know, like 50 bucks or something. It's way cheaper to just borrow your girlfriend's flatiron.
Guy 3: I'm thinking about just shaving my head, because I'm tired of fussing with my hair, anyway.

I haven't heard any squeaking (yet)

Remember when I was worried about that one student that has a reputation for being disruptive and hostile? I had a conversation with a couple of the professors who've had him in class, and they both said that his deal is that if he is not convinced of the practical value of the subject matter, he gets angry about spending all this money on useless stuff. Etc.

Philosphical differences aside, I can in good conscious play along with this to some degree, because I believe in clueing the students in to why we're learning this subject matter. I started this thing in a class I was teaching 5 weeks of last semester, an 8 AM numerical methods type of class. It's really easy to lose contact with the students with that material at that hour. So I decided I'd begin every class with the same two questions: 1. WHO CARES? and 2. How do we do it? By the end of the second week, I was amused that when I start off saying, "Whenever we hit new material, we must ask ourselves two questions. The first is . . . " I'd get a whole chorus back of "WHO CARES?". But, more valuably, I'd ask the class to do a couple minutes of brainstorming trying to think up who does care, and why. And then we'd move on to question 2 and discuss all the relevant nuts and bolts.

I liked so much the vibe that generated right at the beginning that I decided to continue the practice in my current class. I think the students are more willing to get their minds into the material if they're sold at the beginning on the idea that it's useful or valuable in some way. It also seems to have, for the time being, placated the squeaky student, because I have had zero problems with him so far. In fact, he contributes to the discussions, and jokes around with me during labs, and has so far not scared me much. So yay for that.

Annual Reviews

I don't enjoy compiling my information for my annual review. But, I do like the satisfaction of looking at it when I am finished and thinking, "Ha! What do you know! I actually DID accomplish some things."

Do I like this job?

Do I? Better than other jobs I could have?

I am asking myself this because there's a possibility I could have a different job. Partly on a whim, and partly as part of a larger conversation I was having with some friends, I applied for a job at a medium-sized think tank. Yesterday I had a phone interview. Now they would like me to come out for an on-site interview.

I casually but confidentially mentioned this to two of my closest colleagues here, and they both pointed out that only academia has the tenure system and that at other places, there is no such job security. This may be true, but I, currently on the underside of the tenure issue, don't see what's so great about it (and let's be honest, it's kind of a weird system. You know that university that did away with it for certain faculty? I understand the theory behind that move. Also, in my technical discipline, "academic freedom" isn't really that compelling, as we rarely run up against anything truly controversial.).

It seems like the think tank environment would have a lot of the things I enjoy that I don't really get in this environment (the opportunity for wide-ranging discourse, the ability to be a generalist), a lot of the things I enjoy that I do get in this environment (self-direction, the theoretical opportunity to "make a difference"), and not so many of the things I don't like about this environment (the focus on self-branding and the scramble to be the most important on a project/paper/whatever).

I would miss the students.

And it would close doors that I'm not sure I want to shut permanently.

And I'd have to move.

My husband, dear man, is remaining mum on the issue, insisting that he will go wherever, whenever, if it means that I'll have a career I'm happy with. *heart*

Appreciate me silently.

I have a long-harbored suspicion of complements. I almost always interpret them as a request for something, or as banking good vibes for when I am asked for a favor later. Back in the day when I was in the dating world, I considered complements a big turn-off. I invariably saw them as a gentle form of attempted mind-control.

In the job setting, it turns out I never believe them either. For example, in the last week I interpreted

• "Congratulations on that paper I saw you got published" as "It's certainly not a given that you will publish, since you're subpar and kind of a disappointment. Thanks for contributing something."
• "I'm impressed with your writing" as "When I talked to you in person, you pretty much came across as a full-out airhead, but it turns out you can string a few sentences together. That was a nice surprise."
• "We'd like to set up a phone interview" as "Nobody else applied for this position."

So, despite a year of therapy to work on this appreciation problem, I still have it. I like to think that it just keeps me from getting a swelled head.

Squeaky Wheels

I happened upon a review of me on ratemyprofessor.com, and all it said was "unprofessional." I am curious what this means. If I had to guess, I would say it is because I tend to think of and treat my students as junior colleagues, so we usually have a pretty shallow power structure in the class. OR, maybe it's because I sometimes sit on one of the desks to talk with the students, rather than standing at the blackboard to talk TO them. OR, maybe it's because I joke with students that joke with me. OR, maybe it's because I still sometimes dress like a grad student. OR, maybe it's something sinister and terrible that I am not even aware of.

Or the student simply didn't get the grade they wanted.

Also, there's a student in one of my classes this semester who has a reputation for being pretty disruptive, and I'm nervous about this because I am not particularly hard core. I usually get dinged on my course evals for "not keeping everybody under control". Obviously it now occurs to me that it's because I'm totally unprofessional.

But, then, today in class the students asked great questions and we had some good discussion, and somebody stayed after class to tell me about something related he'd recently seen on TV, and I came away feeling upbeat.

It's kind of a shame that so much of teaching seems to come down to personality. I just don't have a discliplinarian's personality. I'm not scary, and I'm overly casual with my students. Is that just the way it is, or should I try to change to satisfy what may be just a vocal angry minority?

Turning a corner

More than one person told me the third year of the tenure-track assistant professor gig was when things started to feel okay. Year one, you are just trying to survive, year 2, you are stressed all the time that you will not be able to be successful, and then some time in year 3, you realize the ball is rolling, people know who you are, you're less bewildered than you used to be, and that maybe you CAN do the job.

I was pretty sure, at the beginning of last semester, that this would not apply to me. That people who felt this third-year unclenching were people who were just altogether more successful than I, and all that.

But . . . then, over the last couple of months, I am feeling myself unclench. What's different? Nothing. Have I gotten more grants? Not really. Published more papers? Nothing I hadn't expected 6 months ago. More accolades coming my way? People knocking on my door to ping my expertise? What? Meh. I don't know. But I welcome the difference. One's quality of life goes way up.

The job would be a lot easier with no students or other professors

Last week, I made it a goal to clear my task list of everything but the long-term items so that I could leave for the holidays with no workish stress items floating around the back of my mind.

I have goals like this a lot. They never work out.

But last week, aaaaaahhhh. No classes, no students, few people on campus - I got through the whole list with a few hours to spare Friday afternoon. It was brilliant.

Love and Hate

A brief list of things I lovelovelove about my life:

• I have the best, cutest husband in the whole world. I won't lie: when we very first got married, we were both pretty miserable for about 6 months. My friend N called it growing pains, and I think it was. Since we grew into being married, it just gets better and more satisfying every day. *heart*
• We have nice friends. When I consider the possibility of leaving this job, one part that makes me not want to consider it any more is that we have a nice little social network here, and they make everything more fun (also, some of them have pretty much the same or similar job frustrations, so . . . that helps).
• I have nice coworkers. They really are great people, and I enjoy coming to work every day and hanging out with them, to the extent that we have time to talk to each other (about work or anything else!). My department is really supportive, so there are always compliments on a job well done, and helpful criticisms on jobs that could be better next time.
• I have great students. Seriously, I enjoy them a good deal. I get the sense that they enjoy me, also, for the most part, even when I accidentally write bitchy tests or that kind of thing. (Don't imagine, however, that all my students like me all the time; I have a collection of snitty emails from angry students which I keep around to humble and amuse me).

A brief list of things I don't love so much about my life:

• All those things I've already said.

The Other Woman

There's this woman that I run into maybe once a year, because we have sort of overlapping research areas, so we often end up at the same kinds of meetings and attending the same kinds of sessions. She is one of several recurring characters in my cast of work-related semi-acquaintances.

She really, really rubs me the wrong way.

She is extremely predictable in the following way: she will always sit at the front of the room during oral presentations; she will always look bored and contemptuous; she will always ask a question, and it will always be negative and accusatory. UNLESS the speaker is one of the "big guns", in which case: her expression will be one of enlightenment and interest, and if she has a question, it is more likely simply a veiled complement.

No joke. She could be a drinking game (take a drink every time she lets out a big sigh, take a drink every time she starts a question with "did you just ignore . . . ", etc.).

I don't understand her at all. Is she very, very insecure? Or just a really angry person? To tell the truth, I don't really try to understand her either, because it's simpler just to dislike and avoid her (because I have, honestly, on occasion seen her in a room and decided to find another session to attend).

Conferences

I like work travel for several reasons:

1. I enjoy hotel rooms. Especially Marriotts, because they now have these AWESOME beds. And often, free internet.
2. I always get a lot of good ideas at conferences. I take lots of notes.
3. Sometimes, when the technical sessions are boring, I take this as a personal complement. I like to interpret my boredom as superiority. ;)

Greener Grass

I was at a meeting the other day with a bunch of other professors in my sort of work, and they were all very convicted about the value of what they are doing. I wish I shared this conviction; I don't know why this work depresses me so much. I feel like if I described to a lay person the sort of work I do, and why, they might say, "Hey, that's really important." I feel like if I agreed, it would make the frustrations much more tolerable. I don't know why it is that for example, in a proposal, I can describe all the reasons it's important, but that on an everyday level I allow my insecurity to tempt me into thinking that I invent these justifications, that they're part of the big picture of my failures or lack of great success. I allow the insecurity to taint my passion for the work, and that makes my insecurity worse.

On a flight on the way back from the meeting, I was seated next to a pediatrician. We talked about a lot of work-related things, even though I don't know anything about pediatrics. It was funny where the similarities are. For example, he talked for a while about all the paperwork, that for every 15 minutes he spends with a patient, he has to fill out 3 or 4 or 5 pages of paperwork, and that this takes up a lot of his time. He talked about how the measures of success seem arbitrary, for example, that if you take two diabetic children, one from a well-off household and a healthy background, and the other from a poor household with a lot of health problems, you can't compare their quality measures, like how many times your diabetic patient goes to the eye doctor or how many follow up calls you have. Maybe the poor diabetic child doesn't have a reliable phone number and moves around a lot, and probably rarely ever goes to the eye doctor - but this doesn't mean that your care of that child has been a failure. More important than how far you are is how far you've come.

I asked him how easy it was for him to become disenchanted by the whole thing: the paperwork, the irritating metrics, etc. He said, "Oh, I guess it happens sometimes. But usually I just figure it's the price of doing the job, and kids need doctors."

I was thinking, "But hey, pediatrics, that's really important."

Faculty Wives

My department, being somewhat old-school, relies a lot on the "faculty wives" to coordinate the more social events associated with normal department function. They do things like arrange tables for dinner meetings, bake things for events, etc. I find this reliance very weird, though I understand how this worked, a million years ago. These "faculty wives" belong to the oldest members of the department, and to an almost bygone era.

It recently came to my attention that some of the "faculty wives" have been pointing out that it's time for some of the younger wives to get involved, and I find this both sad and funny. Certainly the services these women have provided to the department have been valuable and much appreciated, but it's just not realistic in today's world to expect the same level of participation or co-dependency. Wives have their own jobs, events, etc. to try to coordinate. PLUS, allow me to point out the obvious: not all the faculty are men. Ain't no way my husband is baking some fancy breads for my departmental meeting, nor getting together with all the ladies to discuss whether we should have off-white napkins or gold ones at the upcoming breakfast.

I'm sure we can do without the niceties once all those ladies are gone. At the same time, it does make the job just a little colder. It's been pleasant with somebody thinking about the napkins.

Shock and awe

A few nights ago my husband and I met some distant acquaintances for dinner, the wife is a woman that I sort of know, but have never met, and I didn't know the husband at all.

With in minutes of introductions, and what-do-you-do? sort of chit-chat, he more or less came right out with some very nonchalant statements about his political leanings, to the right.

I was oddly taken aback. I lean to the right myself, but in academia, nobody would ever admit to such a thing, certainly not on a "first date". But he was so casual about it, AS IF IT WERE TOTALLY NORMAL.

So I am forced to admit that my perspective is skewed. If I had ever really thought about it, I could have come to this conclusion, but before this evening I never really thought about it. There have been a lot of discussions on my campus and others recently (and certainly before recently) about the general political leanings of college faculty, but I didn't realize how much I had assimilated this microcosmic attitude as reality everywhere.

And.

I'm a little disappointed in myself that this took me by surprise. Fffft.

Why doesn't my office look like the ones in those TIAA-CREF commercials?

You know those commercials? I *heart* the ones about professors because they make my job seem so noble. That's nice. But, those commercial professors have the nice wood-paneled academic-looking offices, with lots of space and books and scholarliness. My office, which is, from what I have observed, more common especially at the big state schools, is cement block, flourescent lighting, and not a speck of wood paneling.

I'm not going to lie to you. It's ugly. It doesn't help that it's kind of a mess. (In my department, if you are gone for a few days, you will come back and somebody has moved a pile of stuff into your office . . . we've had a lot of turnover recently, and nobody feels empowered to throw out files from somebody that's moved on, so they just get shuffled into the next logical person's office.)

The other day, the building custodian came into my office and asked me if it ever annoyed me that my tall filing cabinet was grey while my desk, lateral file, and bookcase were beige. It had not, up until this moment, annoyed me, but now that he mentioned it . . . So he volunteered to swap out my grey filing cabinet with an empty beige one across the hall. This encouraged me to throw out most of the contents of the grey one, which were not mine to begin with.

Through the looking glass.

So, on Friday, I went home and had a little breakdown. Possibly a little breakdown every once in a while is a good thing, except I still feel like crap. Oh, well.

Yesterday I got an email from my friend R, to whom I had recently written a sort of self-pitying note about how icky I feel about my work. He said,

You seem to be harbouring a touch of uncertainty in your accomplishments.

Which made me laugh right away. Seem! A touch! Hahaha! He then proceeded to try to convince me that I am successful and awesome, which I appreciate but don't believe. But everybody needs people like this, who tell them nice things. My husband would do this for me, except that he's been overloaded with my insecurities the last several years and has now moved on to the "tough love" approach wherein he does not permit me to wallow in, or express in any major way, these fears. I guess everybody needs people like this, too.

Lest you think I am all negative all the time, I do have some accomplishments, I just don't think they're important or valuable. I have two papers coming out this fall, which is positive, but doesn't seem like a lot of forward motion to me. I have a couple more currently in the review process and one about to be submitted. I have two grant proposals currently in the pipeline, though I don't expect them to go anywhere because they never do.

See? That's about as positive as I get about my accomplishments. This attitude also depresses me, because prior to this job, I considered myself a pretty upbeat, confident person. I am really hoping that this new anxious, insecure me is only temporary.