prep. [244.365]

I'm teaching 3 sections of the same class this semester, as well as running workshops for a bunch of other classes (being full-time teaching faculty = being very very busy!). Trying to keep my course sections straight is kind of a nightmare - there's no logic to the order the classes occur in relative to…

“faculty” [240.365]

I worked on campus today (while A stayed home with M) and had several meetings, tried (and nearly succeeded) to get all of my remaining prep-work done for the semester, and got a new ID. Only one line on it is different from the ID I had last year - the one that says "Faculty"…

view from my desk. [232.365]

A did a half day at work today so that I could go in for the afternoon. I had a meeting with my TAR (Teaching-as-Research) Fellowship group, and I hadn't seen them since before my defense, and they all cheered for me at the meeting for having finished, and it was kind of awesome. Gotta…

knitting drawer. [224.365]

I got to work on campus all day on Tuesday (A stayed home w/M in the afternoon) so I got started setting up my office for the fall (in addition to going to a friend's defense, meeting with other writing instructors for a training session, and doing some prep-work for my own classes). I have…

i did it! [191.365]

I earned my Ph.D! The defense went well and I don't want to forget it so I'm going to write a bit about it here. For the first part of my introduction before my talk, my advisor read the opening paragraph of my personal statement from when I applied to grad school here, which was…

makin’ slides. [187.365]

OMG, I am such a stressed out mess about my upcoming defense. You'd think after all the practice I've had putting together lectures that this would be no big thing, but...ugh. It's different. I hate it. I have way too many slides and I just don't wanna.

holy crap, i wrote a book. [183.365]

Worked on campus today (while A stayed home with M) so that I could meet with my advisor about planning my defense talk. Also picked up the registration copy of my dissertation from my mailbox - it's huge! There are just a few minor edits I need to make to the front matter, and then…

dealing with data. [141.365]

Spent my first 3 hours of work time this morning fighting with my big old spreadsheet of data. I made some (what-turned-out-to-be) dumb choices about how to code things and then had to redo a bunch of stuff and if I weren't so tired, I probably could've figured out how to write a script to…

page count: 109 [124.365]

I didn't end up adding any pages today, so tomorrow's page count will be the same. Today was about setting up some data analysis (still more to do there), doing some grading (still more of that, too, alas), and meeting with my advisor to set a writing schedule. First interim due date: my first two…

into triple digits. [122.365]

Yeah, I'm posting another photo nearly identical to yesterday's, except this time, my morning dissertation page count was 101. Triple-digits, woohoo! As of right now, I'm actually at 108pgs, but I've also basically picked all of the remaining low-hanging fruit (e.g. Methods sections). I have a whole whack of data left to do analyses on…

it begins. [121.365]

May 1 dissertation page count: 90. Decided to take a photo this morning, noting where I'm starting as I make the final push toward the finish line. I've managed to write 90 pages so far this year in bits and blobs, but now I need to finish the thing. I'm planning to take a photo…

office plant! [120.365]

One of my writing students, who had decided that my office was too dreary and depressing in its decor (he is correct on that front) decided to give me an office plant. It had been his dorm plant, but since he can't take it back on the plane with him, he thought my office would…

hey, i’m in this book! [85.365]

This showed up in my mailbox today. I'm a coauthor on one of the papers in it - it's a French journal, but all of the articles are in English. It's a special issue on one of the topics I've been studying ("Weak Definites" - if anyone is actually curious about them I'd be happy…

alphabet soup. [77.365]

I was awarded a TAR ("Teaching As Research") fellowship by our university's CIRTL ("Center for Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning") program, as part of an NSF ("National Science Foundation") grant, to use my writing classes as a case study for supporting STEM ("Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math") students in a freshman-level WAC ("Writing Across…

view from my desk today. [73.365]

I got to work at home, by myself, today. It was glorious. I wish I could have had all 5 days of this that I was supposed to have, but I'm grateful for the one. I hadn't realized just how badly not having a window in my office was affecting me this year. I almost…