Things I'm looking forward to about a new house

This whole house buying thing brings up all sorts of mixed feelings in me. I always thought this would be the sort of thing I'd be doing with someone. So throughout the whole process, it feels like my singleness is being cast in my face. I know that seems crazy - it's a business transaction - but that's it. So I'm trying to combat these down feelings by thinking and talking about all the things I'll like about living in this particular house. The house I'm currently living in is not a good space. It's too far from most of my friends to drop in in a neighborly fashion and its too small to entertain. It's in a part of town where I can't really walk to work because of traffic patterns and it's close enough that I feel lame driving in.

Anyway... the new house will certainly be a better space. And here's my list of things I'm looking forward to:
1) a yard for my dog - although the fence needs fixing
2) on two bus routes and in an area where I can walk or bus or bike to work
3) because I'll have a yard, I can walk home and then not feel guilty for NOT walking my dog
4) a garbage disposal
5) a dishwasher
6) a reasonable sized kitchen/dining room
7) a space that will allow me to have people over for dinner or backyard barbecues
8) in a neighborhood where I know lots of people
9) a permanentish space which means I'll be looking for art work and furniture instead of saving all my money all the time to buy a permanent-ish space.

Things I think I'll like in the end but will require work that I won't like in the meantime
1) a room that once repainted will make a wonderful guest room/office
2) a room that once I have appropriate furniture will make a good reading room/office
3) a yard that will be fun to enjoy, but I need to hire someone to do yard work and buy lawn furniture.
4) potentially nice shrubbery/garden space if I can set up something low maintainence

Plagarism & Stern Lectures

So first, my stern lecture about email etiquette has had a bonus effect - two more students have apologized (yes I had a rash of really rude emails), one unnecessarily, all students emailing about their test grades have done so from university accounts and included their full names, and all of the emails of started with a greeting. I didn't provide all that info in my lecture. They figured it out on their own. I took a leaf from here, and framed it as being pre-professionals and acting in a professional matter. It worked. They do KNOW how to behave even if they don't always DO it. Competence vs Performance in action.

I also had my first true honest to goodness plagiarism case that I could prove today. (I have had two other cases of cheating along the lines of having someone write the paper for them that I couldn't prove). I tried to put the fear of God into her. We talked about long term consequences to short term poor choices. Academic probation. Never do it again. I have no idea if I had any effect or not. No tears. No yelling. Not sure. I still have to write a letter for her file because even though we aren't going to pursue it up to the level of the college, I want to document it. Not looking forward to that tomorrow!

RBOC Grading Jail Edition

• So I had two very interesting lunches this week with colleagues that I'll get around to blogging.. hmm over the weekend maybe. I want to process what I think happened at each one.

• My 3rd year review apparently went well. I won't know this for sure until next week either.

• I made an announcement today about professionalism in email because I had two different students flip out in email at me in the last week over VERY MINOR grade issues (along the lines of I don't even know why this was assigned anyway, but the grading was totally unfair and I absolutely can't imagine what you or the TA was thinking etc. etc.), two emails from random addresses with no name, and one that used IM abbreviations so much I couldn't figure out what they meant without googling the abbreviations. So get this, one of the students realized I was refering to her and apologized! Wow!

• I am in grading jail. I gave an exam last wed and promised students to return the exams in labs Thurs & Fri. I have graded 62 of 80 papers. I have to finish by 1:30 tomorrow. I can, but I don't want to.
  

• I can't tell you some of the funniest things from the exams without revealing field. But students are really funny when they don't know the answer and brain dump onto the page. Oh, I can tell one... We illicited things from subjects in our experiment....

• My grade distribution is currently 9 A, 20 B, 9 C, 14 D, 12 F. I expect most of the next 20 will end up in the B/D range from skimming short answer responses. Clearly the test was way freaking hard. Usually the distribution is more like 20 A, 20 B, 15C, misc D/F. If I curve so that the highest student get a perfect score, the distribution is: 19 A, 13 B, 14 C, 8 D, 5 F. Do I curve? For what it's worth the D students really didn't get it, but clearly many of them were almost C students and many of the B students were almost A students.
  

• I provide lots of small participation type grades on which students typically get perfect scores (a for effort and all that). Does that change your answer to curving?
  

Being Programmatic II

So I described my change in my own research direction following my doctoral program here... And I also got involved in student projects that, while ultimately productive and good for my publication rate (and interesting), also dilute my programmatic focus. So, with the grant I submitted unscored, I'm now in a position to really seriously evaluate whether this is a direction I want to continue in now. If the grant had been scored high or funded I would have continued this path because, well, the grant was funded...

so what are my options now?

1) The simple and obvious one is wait for feedback on the grant. Revise and Resubmit. No serious change in focus. Keep plugging away at the role of tagging in knowledge organization both in libraries and elsewhere since that is where my interest lies and what I think is most interesting (particularly the connections between libraries and elsewhere).
Pros: I want to be doing this work. I've already gotten feedback once and am getting feedback again on it. I have pilot data and stimuli created and ready to go for the proposed projects. I just need the funds to carry things out on the proper scale to find results. I should have a submitted publication on tagging within libraries by the time I resubmit the grant. And hopefully solid pilot data on tagging in other contexts as pilot data with a large N.
Cons: It got a very low score the first time and wasn't talked about this time. So either the reviewers think the work has a fatal flaw, or they don't like the theoretical framing, or they think it is overambitious. Not being scored is a big clue that it's time to rethink.

2) Narrow down and only focus on tagging in libraries. I'll have to think hard about how to improve my stimuli and frame my questions here so that it is effective. And it means giving up a piece of the theoretical stuff. It still allows me to set up for later projects with this grant and it still means continuing down this changed direction stuff. I don't know if it's sufficiently different that it restarts the clock on number of submissions I have available. If I narrow so considerably, but get rejected AND it uses up my last submission I'm not sure what I'll do. I think in many ways this depends on what the reviews say - which part they thought was particularly weak and which were most salvageable.
Pros: I will soon have a publication in this area. I have pilot data for a spin off. There are really an infinite number of spin offs available to me. I think it's a theoretically plausible direction. I can make a stronger case for applied relevance. I think it will require an extremely large number of participants to be interesting though and so I'm a bit worried about it as a topic by itself.
Cons: I miss the whole connection with non-library areas. This is the most difficult part of the grant, but it's a longstanding interest. I did a paper on this as part of my comps in my phd program and then let the topic go on the advice of my dissertation direction. It narrows the possible future directions pretty dramatically. Lower risk and lower impact. I'm not sure if I can do this quickly enough to have publications out in sufficient number within this topic so that I am programmatic enough for tenure.

3) Return to my original dewey decimal studies. I'll look more programmatic with just a year or two off doing something else. There is plenty to be studied systematically here. I can keep doing variations on the theme, and I can see a clear line of research to be done here.
Pros: I have a clear track record here. There is an applied need for a more full understanding of how this system of classification works with different library patrons. And the group of patrons I specialize in are particularly understudied. I could put together a grant that would be competitive fairly easily I think.
Cons: I'd be starting the grant from scratch. I don't think I'd get funded on the first try but possibly. Really I'm resisting this because I don't really think this is a plausible direction for organization in the future. And I don't know how to ground the work with my population of patrons within the new framework to make it look like I'm not switching gears.

February Resolutions

So I think as can be seen below I wasn't very good with keeping resolutions this month. I did okay with being in touch with far flung friends and family and with teaching, but I slacked on food and exercise and research. I'm actually going to give myself permission to slack on all fronts in March since I move smack dab in the middle of everything. I think getting packed and keeping teaching going in the process will be sufficient things to to do.

Really, I'm using both my resolutions and moving to procrastinate on the other one so I think it's better to focus. Oh I can't deal with packing because I have to work on this data project. Oh I can't deal with this data project because I should be packing. And on and on and on. So since the move is looming and urgent. And since I clearly can't motivate myself to do it all I'm just going to deal with that one for a month.

Work
Teaching
Assignments Card Catalog class
Rework lectures for Epistomology
Research
Collaborative Project
Stats
Analysis #3
Archival Data Project
Assign data analysis to new ugrad
Pilot Data Project
Schedule all subjects - Feb 20
Stats - Feb 28
Data Interpretation - Mar 15
Conf submission - Mar 31
Writing
Theory Article
- Intro
- Review of Theory
- Applied Perspective Patron1- Feb 29
- Applied Perspective Patron2
- Conclusion
Personal
Id exercise location
Daily prayer
Menus & Groceries wk 1
Menus & Groceries wk 2
Menus & Groceries wk 3
Menus & Groceries wk 4
Dishes wk 1
Dishes wk 2
Dishes wk 3
Dishes wk 4
Relationships
letters to 4 2 people
2 1 lunches
Phone call wk 1
Phone call wk 2
Phone call wk 3
Phone call wk 4

Being Programmatic

So I got some pretty bad news about my grant submission last week. The grant was unscored. That means the reviewers deem it to be in the bottom 50% of the grants that they read. It doesn't get talked about. I just get critiques from the reviewers. But since the reviewers view the grant as unfundable, the critiques may be very short and not fully developed and thus hard to respond to. I get one more shot with this idea for this funding agency. So I have to think carefully about going back in with this submission in order to maximize my chances.

As I talk and think about this I think some history is relevant. I did my dissertation with Big Name Gracious Scholar. It was a fantastic experience. He studies the details of the Dewey Decimal system and dabbles in other approaches to card cataloging. But it's safe to say that most of his research is grounded in traditional approaches to card cataloging. My dissertation focused on similar issues but at a slightly more global level - say organization within the whole library rather than organization within a subject area.

Then I took this job. I industriously published my dissertation data and 1 reanalysis of that data. I started a followup study which took about 18 mos in data collection and the analysis/write up is just finishing up. It has the potential for 2 more re-analyses of the extant data (1-2 publications depending...). In the first semester I did a round of readings with 3 students on nontraditional approaches to cataloging. I'm not talking about selecting just a different flavor of organization, but radically different approaches to the whole problem of knowledge organization and retreival. Say instead of an externally imposed organizational system like the Dewey Decimal system, instead a self-organizing system like tagging and ranking of items by users. Presumably over time and with a large number of users you still end up with subject based groups of books and other items. Ultimately you still have a well organized library, but how you come up with the groupings is radically different. And I learned alot.

Out of that, I started three tangential student projects - one on font styles and readability and one contrasting the Dewey Decimal system (external organization) with user tagging as an organizational method(self-organization) and one examining how people come to learn whatever system is in place grounded in the self-organization approach. The compare and contrast project turned into a dissertation I'm co-advising that is moving very slowly (and not likely to be published before I come up for tenure). The font styles one is under review now and the training study is in the final stages of data collection.

In addition I was exposed extensively in a variety of contexts to self-organizing approaches to solving a related problem - say font selection in publishing or coming up with meaningful book titles. And I started thinking about nontraditional approaches to card cataloging. Most of this exposure wasn't directly through things that apply to card cataloguing though. But some people say that the problem of meaningful book names really isn't that different than the problem of organizing books into meaningful retrievable units. And if that's true than my intellectual community isn't as isolated as it feels right now.

But here's the problem. Technically I'm the card catalog person on faculty. And I currently have 2 publications and 1 under review on the dewey decimal system. But I also have 1 publication on the interface between fonts and the classification in the dewey decimal system. And 1 publication on fonts under review. And potentially 1 publication soon on learning to use tags for both book titles and books. And eventually 1-2 publications contrasting these two approaches. And a grant in, that has just be soundly rejected, looking at tagging both in card cataloging and in other knowledge systems not found in libraries - say in the phone system or something very unrelated.

I'm a bit afraid that I look unprogrammatic right now. I think I can right that by tenure time, but I think I'll have to pick an area and get focused soon....

And this has turned into a terribly long post, so I'll write more about what I think my options might be tomorrow.

Bad.

The grant is a revision. Of the original review panel exactly 1 person remains on the roster. And he has to recuse himself due to conflict. Good? or Bad?

Leap Year

As seen on Rev Dr. Mom's. I spent this leap day listening to two very important people give talks and trying to be pleasant and sociable in face of discovering that my grant was unscored. I'm not good with precise memories in that way, but if I look back 4 years....

~February 29, 2004--year before I graduated with my PhD. Probably I was working on my prospectus and teaching. I was living in the midwest so it would have been cold and wet. Spring around the corner

~February 29, 2000--I would have been just finishing up my masters. Living in a major metropolitian city. Doing an applied librarianship post and driving all over town. It was the first time in my masters training when I thought I could perhaps stomach doing this job longer than it took to finish my training. A key professor took me out to breakfast later that year and talked me into a research career instead of a practical careeer though.

~February 29, 1996--In the second year of high school boarding school. On the rocks with my BF at the time. Trying to figure out what I want to do with my life - everyone else seemed to know. It was a tough year.

~February 29, 1992-- 8th grade. Spent in Texas. My family moved a lot.

~February 29, 1988--4th grade, Spent in Louisiana. Which even though it may have really crummy regular public schools actually has fantastic special ed. I had a very good educational experience there.

~February 29, 1984--kindergarten. Kansas. Mrs. Eplee was my teacher. I walked to school. Snow angels. I had slick boots and the alley used to ice over and we'd "skate" down. It was lots of fun.

Freaking Out

So I was under the impression that my major grant was not going to be reviewed until mid-end March. I was just clicking around on Major National Funding Agency's website and discovered that it is actually going to be reviewed tomorrow. At 1pm ET.

The grant is a revision. Of the original review panel exactly 1 person remains on the roster. And he has to recuse himself due to conflict. Good? or Bad?

And my 3rd year review is next week. Do I call the grant officer and see if I can get my scores early? So that they are in for my review? Or is that not done? (It would be a real coup if I have a fundable score on a grant this size by year 3. But it would certainly cast a pall on things if it gets ANOTHER low score). Do I ask, but only tell if it's positive?

I'm very good at faking coolness about these sorts of abstract decisions that are out of my hands. I'm even good at actually feeling cool about it when it is 3-6 months away and I don't know who is on the review panel. So not cool now. Feeling total stomach butterflies.

Grumpiness

I am totally in a grumpy mood today. Here's why:

• It snowed. Again.
• My TAs apparently can't run a review session. Evidence - 2 different students emailed to complain about the quality. One was awful close to a flame. I've had lots of questions emailed about a topic which was simple and basic that apparently got explained in a weird way. They didn't know definitions of basic terms. They knew they were unprepared in advance and didn't tell me.
• On an unrelated topic I have a grading issue to solve because of their lack of communication with a student. On the one hand I should back them up. On the other hand they didn't really communicate well with the student.
• My paper, which has been submitted to our flagship journal for two months, has to have the review coordinated by someone other than the editor in my area because of a conflict of interest. This person has not yet assigned it to an associated editor or reviewers because "she couldn't think of who to assign it to since it isn't her area"....
  
• My photo class was changed from a day about composition to attending a photo lecture the instructor wanted to attend
• I had to ask three times to get back a cord the instructor borrowed from me.
• I'm stressed about packing etc and can't seem to carve out time or get motivated to start the project.
  
• I have no food in the house because I'm moving. But I still have to eat for 3 weeks.

Edited to Add: I made homemade pizza tonight and managed to burn it.... Since that is the only thing that will satisfy my current craving I ordered in pizza and am $20 poorer and just now eating 3 hours after dinner time.

How much do we give up?

The conversation about how difficult it can be to be in academia is making the rounds.

What Now talks about the identity she has as a tenured professor and how she isn't ready to give that up. From there I ended up at Squadratomagico and Highly Magnified, Thoroughly Educated (who actually began the conversation) talking about how being a professor actually can cause you to lose various identities because the work becomes all consuming. So I started thinking about what have I given up to be where I am.

I'm a single woman. Have I given up romantic relationships to be here? Perhaps... But I am not sure they were healthy relationships to start with. Certainly, my desire to date someone who shares my faith and my own quirks interfere at least as much as my job does.

I live far (1500+miles) from my family and see them only a few times a year. Have I given up ties to my family to be here? Yes, I think so - I would certainly visit my new nephew more often if I could drive rather than fly. But maybe not because I can fly fairly inexpensively. And in some ways my career allows me more flexibility to be with family - I was there when my grand mother died and when my aunt was in a coma precisely BECAUSE I work an academic job and could take significant time off as long as it didn't interfere with teaching duties.

What about hobbies? outside interests? I think that I have those. If I worked in a less demanding job I might have more. But I also would probably like my job less.

And then I found this post by propter doc that echoes my own sense more closely I think.

Ranier Marie Rilke writes:

I know your profession is hard and full of contradiction of yourself....I can only ask you to consider whether all professions are not like that, full of demands, full of enmity against the individual, saturated as it were with the hatred of those who have found themselves mute and sullen in a humdrum duty. The situation in which you now have to live is no more heavily laden with conventions, prejudices,and mistakes than all the other situations, and if there are some that feign a greater freedom, still there is none that is itself broad and spacious and in contact with the big things of which real living consists. Only the individual who is solitary is like a thing placed under profound laws and when he goes out into the morning that is just beginning or looks out into the evenings that is full of happening and if feels what is going on there then all status* drops from him as from a dead man though he stands in the midst of sheer life.

I don't see that the trade-offs I'm making are unbearable. And I'm not sure that they would be any different if I worked at any other job that I loved (because any job that I loved would challenge me and that challenge would play out in ways that mean less free time and more job focus). Being a medical doctor or a pastor or a translator or a foreign aid worker are all jobs I would consider seriously or have considered in the past. They all make specific demands and place requirements of one sort another on a person that can be inconvenient. In the meantime, I know these inconveniences. Distance. Mentally consuming. Status driven*. And I think I like the devil I know better than the devil I don't know.

*Maybe the thing I fear the most is becoming hungry for the status academia confers. But that's another post.

Wit & What's left

I just finished a day long seminar on suicide and bereavement counseling through my church. I found the day in the class emotionally taxing. The discussion of adolescent depression and suicide risks and what it is like to be a family member coping with such a situation was very moving. The grief books were presented much more distantly. I know many of the people in class well enough to know that they are dealing more directly with the issues of death and grief than one might hope for in a class of this nature. As we talked very distantly and impersonally about the stages and processes of grief I couldn't help but wonder whether hearing the material was difficult. Whether they were checking in on themselves and where they were with their own grief. You could watch some of the emotions play on people's faces and know that this was a moment of great difficulty and also great comfort. I wonder how the class would have gone differently if we had talked about how the books made us feel instead of talking about the book.

And I came home and what did I find in my mailbox from netflix, but a movie called Wit. Wit is about a single, childless professor diagnosed with ovarian cancer and treated in a teaching hospital. It follows her from initial diagnosis to death and is very moving. On another day I might have cryed my way through it. But the parts that were most difficult to watch were the ones where someone is doing a simple kindness in the cold medical setting. When the nurse puts lotion on the professor's hands. When a former professor comes to visit. If you work in any clinical setting and haven't seen this, you should. A reminder of the humanity of us all. A reminder that we each face our own mortality at some point. I hope I can have the grace that this character has when my time comes. I wonder how her treatment would have gone if people had talked to her and about her as a person rather than about her cancer and to each other.

Reading for Pleasure Wednesdays: Short Stories by Alice Munro

One of my Christmas gifts was a collection of short stories by Alice Munro. I first read a review of this book in the New Yorker (I think) and thought it sounded intriguing. It is beyond intriguing. Another book on perspectives. And in some ways on the hidden lives that we each live. The short stories are actually the perfect length to read before bed - 20 to 30 minutes. And although they are not heavy reading in the sense of the prose, they leave you thinking. Slightly unsettled.

The characters feel as if they are your neighbors next door. People you know and encounter everyday. In some cases your own family members. But the way they interact and behave, the quirks and motivations, the final choices they make for good or bad, never fail to surprise. And make you look at your neighbors in a slightly new way.

With the exception of the first two stories, the stories seem more focused on death than I expected from the title. But fundamentally, ultimately, the stories are about the relationships the characters had in life and how they carry forward as they face their own death or the deaths of others.

I have one more collection of Alice Munro's short stories. Once I move, it will take up residence on my bedside table. A neat sized bite to read before bed when I'm too tired for something longer.

Sunday Food

Early in the week I made my own version of shrimp scampi. Thin noodles. Frozen shrimps. Used up 1/2 n 1/2 that was about to turn, a half glass of white wine left in the bottle, snow peas that were in the fridge for who knows what, and green onions. A very tasty way to clean out the fridge.

I also made lemon pepper chicken. The recipe calls for chicken thighs. I used breasts - that was a mistake. It's much much better with thighs. I wish they sold individual flash frozen boneless skinless chicken thighs just like they do chicken breasts. It would make my life so much easier.

I think since I have the whole day to be of the home I am going to make chili (2/3 of which will go to the homeless shelter) and a shrimp-pasta-pea casserole. I think if I make the casserole ahead of time I might be able to come home and pop it in the oven and eat. It has to cook for 30 min or so and I can't get motivated to MAKE it and COOK it all in one night - I'm too hungry when I get home.

A long Winter

For the third time in two months, sunday morning services are canceled due to weather. In all the time I've lived in the midwest, sunday morning services have been canceled zero times prior to this. We've also had all activities at church canceled 4 other times on a weekday. Several of those times, weather men have predicted that the storm would miss us and then it didn't. I wonder if this is God's way of giving church staff a vacation.

Starting in early October and carrying through to a month ago, this year has been a hard year for our church. The senior pastor lost a parent, as did his wife. A teenager in a prominent family committed suicide - the family was close personal friends with the assoc. pastor and the youth director. Two other young vital church members passed away for various other reasons. The church is also trying to decide whether to build a new building or remodel the old - very controversial topics leading to additional tension. Winter has been long this year. And not just in the snow day sense. I think we are all looking forward to the renewal that comes with Spring.

Valentine's Day

Your Candy Heart Says "Hug Me"

A total sweetheart, you always have a lot of love to give out. Your heart is open to where ever love takes you! Your ideal Valentine's Day date: a surprise romantic evening that you've planned out Your flirting style: lots of listening and talking What turns you off: fighting and conflict Why you're hot: you're fearless about falling in love

What Does Your Candy Heart Say?

Reading for Pleasure Wednesdays: Dragon's Fire

Truly pleasure reading - one of the new releases in a series I have followed since I was a teenager. This is a series of books that I go to when I want something familiar and comforting. Something that I know I'll like and won't have to think too hard to get into. Because I've read and reread the Pern books I know and am comfortable with the world (which is incredibly rich, detailed, and scientifically accurate). The perfect antidote to a bad week or an overfull brain.

The thing I have come to value about the Pern series is that Anne McCaffery and now her son Todd have the ability to tell the same story - the exact same events - from multiple equally valid and strong perspectives. I think this process of telling and retelling a story made me come to understand how important it is to understand what each person brings to the table.

As far as this particular book goes, although I generally like Todd McCaffery, I actually think the perspective taking breaks down. There is an odd break in the middle of the book that, if you haven't read the previous book in this time of Pern (Dragon's Kin) you would be completely and totally mystified. I'm not clear on the why the book is split the way it is. At several points details seemed missing and I was actually having trouble following the perspectives. This is unusual and I wonder if future books will be clearer. It is co-written with Anne and I thought at first that perhaps they each wrote half, but the voice stays the same. I am still looking forward to the next two books that Todd collaborates/writes: Dragonharper and Dragonheart. I assume they are all set in the same time but I hope that they are a bit smoother. I am very pleased that Todd is picking up the line of Pern stories - I will continue to look forward to the next one and the next one along the way.

What makes a good dissertation advisor?

I saw this question here and I think it was sparked by the problems Anastasia is having*.

Now, I've got my own experience as a student and the observations of the students who surrounded me at the time to inform my idea of what it means to be a good dissertation director. And since I've been a new asst. professor, I've been in a co-advisor situation with 1 student (which has made me swear off co-advising) and a mentor to two more students whose primary advisor is the same advisor as student 1. Oh, and 1 masters student who abandoned his/her thesis. But I haven't yet supervised a dissertation myself all alone. For the last two years I've been looking for a student to take on, but we haven't had a qualified applicant interested in my subject area. So with that caveat, the question rests on my mind - what makes a good dissertation advisor. And how do I be that person?

The best summary I've seen of different traits is located here. For those not able to go beyond the fire wall it is an article by Nature on Mentoring based on interviews with Mentors. Someone on another blog referred to it in the comments and I read it and I think it is fantastic. Beyond those things that the describe (fostering a professional and scientific community, understanding a continuum of hands on and hands off ness... etc), I think fit with a mentor is important. Someone may be a fantastic mentor to you and a crummy mentor to someone else. And vice versa. So what makes for a good fit?

Similar (but not identical) interests - This seems obvious, but it's much easier to work closely and collaborate with someone on research if the questions they are pursuing are INTERESTING to you. Not necessarily exactly what you do. In fact if they only overlap partially with you, I think it might be easier to establish independence, have a clear distinction between dissertation and previous/collaborative projects, and so forth. If there is no overlap though, it means that it will be hard for the advisor to be up to speed on key points and methods, there will be no way for the advisor to see missing seminal articles or major ideas in the lit review. And it means that the advisor might or might not be as interested in getting things out the door to publication. Working on a close project is more likely to make you a priority and get attention from a busy and distracted advisor.

Resources - Do they have funding? Can they help you find funding? Do they have the time to read and attend to your work? Do they have the emotional resources to be rational about critiques? Can they help you attend conferences? Do they have social captial to introduce you around?

Working style - If they are punctual and you are last minute or you are detail oriented and they are big picture or you are disorganized and they are a neat freak, you will have a harder time. Do they prefer to have so many projects going that they can't keep up? Or do they have myopic focus on a single project to the exclusion of all other ideas and perspectives? Do they prioritize fairness? harmony? safety? rule-following? Do their priorities match or at least complement yours? Your advisor will not be your twin. People with different styles can muddle along. But radically different priorities and styles in the workplace will lead to a much more difficult time all around.

Communication style - I made this be a separate one because I think that clear expectations and communication about what to expect is important. I, for instance, tend to be very direct and blunt in my comments. I can be extremely critical. I'm also effusive in my praise. If you need a warm nurturing person to be your advisor you might do better with someone else. On the other hand, if I had an advisor who sugar coated things; who was less than direct, that person would totally lose my trust. Communication in terms of deadlines, writing critiquing, and verbal organization in meetings can all be important. How do they foster your ideas as you work with them? How do they respond when they see that a mistake has been made? For me this included prompt, precise, clear feedback. Decisiveness. Freedom to work independently until I needed assistance and then as much help as I asked for.

Concern for the whole person - Do they have a life outside of work? Do they understand and respect your own non-doctoral program commitments? Do they demonstrate that they have compassion for family circumstances and personal crises in addition to professional deadlines and development? Training can be all consuming. Both a model for and permission to have a life is good.

Professionalism - I'm not sure if this is distinct from communication style but I think recognizing that this is a professional environment with professional expectations is key. It encompasses a variety of things for me. There will be boundaries between me as a faculty and you as a student. Respect. Show up for meetings. Work hard. No yelling at people. No harrassment. Concern for the whole person doesn't mean I'm going to be your counselor or best friend.

In your best interests - It's best to be working with someone who you believe is looking out for your best interests at all times. There may be times when your best interest isn't clear or when your best interest is wrapped up in things that are also your advisor's best interest (e.g. getting a grant that will fund both you and your advisor), but if you don't have this trust, it will be a long hard slog. One thing I truly valued about my advisor was that whatever recommendation he made for me (from jobs to projects, to writing advice) he was always trying to help me be the best scientist I could be in all ways. Even if he was wrong, the fact that I could trust his motives was a tremendous boost to dealing with the situation. For me this also included an understanding that this person would hold me to high expectations. For others it might mean they will work to get you through as quickly as possible to accommodate a child being born or a spouse moving on or assist with flexible timing of deadlines to allow for a combination of work and school or need to travel to care for family needs.
I should be quick to point out here that many people don't deserve such trust for many reasons. I am not advocating blind trust. But entering into a relationship where you know trust is lacking seems crazy to me. Some are truly selfish and self-centered and willing to throw the student under the bus to save themselves; some are unaware, clueless about others and not interested in their students' welfare; some are not in a place at the moment - for whatever
personal or professional reason - to place the student first in priority.

*This is emphatically not a comment on Anastasia's situation - more my own reflection on my own situation.

Class Planning Frustration

In the middle of teaching class this week I thought of a fantastically improved layout of the material for the class. Big picture reorganization rather than individual lecture reorganization.
Unfortunately it involves taking the material of weeks 1-3 (which I've already taught) and redistributing that material throughout the material in weeks 4-8 (which I haven't taught yet). It won't help this term's class but hopefully will improve future classes. I think the students will find the info clearer, more straightforward and coming at them in bites the size they can more easily digest.

Essentially weeks 1-3 are theory. Weeks 4-8 are application problems. Reorganization is teaching content/data in week 4 with theory 1 & 2. Week 5, more practice on theory 2, introduce theory 3, and teach content data from week 5. This should lead to more problem sets. Teaching theories 1 or 2 at a time instead of in one fell swoop and giving the students the hooks to apply the theories to. No text books are organized this way, but I think it will work.

I keep trying to figure out how to apply this insight into this class's material but it seems not possible if we are still going to cover all material. How frustrating!

This Week's Meals

This week was strange because it was filled with Blizzards and Job Searches. I actually ate out quite a bit and rather sucked at doing the dishes and keeping the kitchen clean once the work week started. On the other hand, other than coffee cups there wasn't much in my dish pile. Nonetheless, the kitchen is spotless now, so I'm starting fresh again.

Saturday: Roast Chicken, Roasted Potatoes, Frozen Veggies
Sunday: Roast Chicken Chimichangas --> Good, but too spicy. Leave out green chilis next time. Quick because of Sat's dinner. I ate/used as leftovers the thighs from a grocery store pre-roasted chicken and frozen vegetables. I used the breast meat from that chicken for this recipe and thus did very little cooking.
Question for the blogosphere: what to do with leftover Queso Fresco?
Monday: Leftovers from Sat & Sun for Lunch and Dinner respectively.
Tuesday: Lunch w/ Candidate; Dinner: Leftovers from Sun.
Wednesday: Lunch: Leftover Apricot Porkchops Dinner: Tomato Soup (from freezer) and Cheese Toast. The tomato soup is EASY and QUICK to make. Doubles well. And freezes well. I make it much more often once I got an immersion blender - much less of a mess than using a real blender to puree hot soup. Usually I make Ham & Cheese Scones to go with it for the fresh batch and then do Cheese toast for reheated rounds.
Thursday: Lunch w/ Candidate; Dinner from local coop - Palak Paneer & Curried Squash. My favorite meal from their deli and something I haven't figured out how to make on my own yet.
Friday: Lunch - Sandwich from coffee shop located between meeting 1 and meeting 2 (eaten during meeting 2); Dinner: Take & Bake Chicken Artichoke Pizza & Wine & Chocolates.
Saturday: Lunch - Leftover Pizza; Dinner French Toast with Ice Cream and Raspberries and Nuts (Ice Cream was mostly because I didn't have any whip cream).

Hopefully next week will be a little more lowkey and will help me to get back on track. Definately I have to make chili before Sunday. I am not sure what else I might make. Maybe chicken caccatori? Maybe something italian. I have to make a plan tomorrow so I can shop between church and