Barely tenured

The good news and the bad news

The good news: the book is in!

Even better, there was no co-author-on-co-author violence in the final days, despite the sudden (brief! it came back up! oh my god!) collapse of our version control system.

The bad news: this grading thing. So I just started. Like, for the semester. This afternoon. They're way ahead of me: seven assignments in, and another coming tomorrow. Wheeeee!

5w0d and counting...

One week later, we're at 2239. A fine number, and entirely comparable to last time (this is a day earlier, again). Progesterone today? Unknown, but the the Saturday number had made it in and was "fine" at 31.

So that's it for bloodwork. Dr. D has changed his mind about early ultrasounds. Last time I had to wait until 7 weeks. Now he wants to check for ectopics, so I'm going in in six days and then again a week and a half later to look for a heartbeat.

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The bloom is off the new semester. Well -- it was never really on, I suppose, with the 2ww and all, and the book manuscript coming back from the copy editor and due on MONDAY FUCKING MONDAY OH MY GOD. 

So I haven't been doing a very good job of prepping, or grading, or being aware that my students exist as separate people with, like, names and opinions and needs and stuff.

For my upper level elective, it's been okay. I'm terribly lucky that it's huge and filled with enthusiastic students -- that makes everything so much easier.

But ergonomics-for-the-awkward? The class I have never been happy with, and neither have been its desperate distribution-requirement-fulfilling students? That I was supposed to redesign last summer, but then the book, the fucking book, and two goddamn cycles ate up all the time?

It could be worse -- and has been. But today I got e-mail from a student too, um, tired to come to class, and then e-mail from another that I'd offended in lecture, and -- and I don't want to get defensively depressed about it this early, really I don't, it's so unhealthy to do that, but it's going to be hard not to.

I'm really sort of obsessing about the second e-mail. If I'd been able to focus, really focus as I prepped, I don't think there would have been a problem.

I'm still maintaining faith that after the manuscript goes OUT THE FUCKING DOOR I'll be able to catch up. But so much of the quality of the interaction is determined by what happens at the outset, and I have let some of them down already.

DEAR GOD: STOP FUCKING WITH ME

I got a little nosebleed right before class today.

The department secretary sits right outside my office. "You know when I got nosebleeds? When I was pregnant. Just turned my head and it'd start pouring out."

Ya think that someone who sees me walking past 25 times a day might have noticed the extra eight pounds in my gut and how often I'm going to pee?

FUCK THE PIO.

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My favorite committee from last year? The one where we got stuff done? This year it's loaded with dinosaurs. Dinosaurs with grudges against the institution and each other.

ROAR.

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The book manuscript, marked up, came back today. It's so close to going out the fucking door... but why couldn't it have come in on Monday, after Miss T.'s birthday party? About which I am shitting bricks. It's her third, but our first party...

The professorette was grumpy at Commencement

I. Hey! You with the baggy plaid jumper, orange t-shirt, and purple stockings? Your daughter might have deserved that when she was 14, but she really doesn't today. Academic Honors Assembly, ma'am, that's what this is. She's been a good girl here, and you could have done better.

II. The name tag does not go over the nipple.

III. Parents asking about their child can reasonably expect unlimited amounts of praise. Go on, keep asking, and we'll keep talking. Grandparents? At least five minutes each, with amplification services provided as necessary. Aunts and uncles? At most two minutes -- and please do try to listen while we effuse to the parents and/or grandparents.

Keep your eyes and ears open as you walk the halls

I. "YOU TELL HER! YOU TELL HER, that SHE MUST NEVER EVER make this happen AGAIN. YOU TELL HER, that MY CLASS RUNS until THREE PEE EM." The student is a foot taller than the professor, his face blank as he absorbs blow after verbal blow.

I've made him angry myself, in the past. Sure, you can scream at your colleagues (the tenured ones, at least). But like this? At a student? Who doesn't even seem to be the direct target of the wrath?

II. Piled neatly on a side table: a lightly blue-penciled (yet apparently complete) draft of a job application cover letter.

Dear Ivy League Alma Mater,

Please hire me. I've been out here in the sticks for years, and even though the students are smart and even kinda hot, well, I just can't take it any more.

Look at my book! Look, I'm writing another one! And, yes, I'd give up tenure for even a tiny chance at returning to you, sweets.

Love,

Unhappy Associate Professor

I considered e-mailing the author, whom I don't know at all well, who doesn't even work in this building, to let her know I've rescued it. But the date is over two months ago. Not worth it.

III. Over by the window at the far end, a faculty member squints at her calendar and whispers hoarsely to her cellphone:

"Thanks for calling back... yes, I was wondering how long I should expect to be on Lupron before Day 1 happens?... well, last time it was 10 days. I'm an out-of-town patient and I'm trying to plan travel... well, I'm trying to make a plan where it will be the least likely that I'll have to cancel things, but there's a business trip that needs to happen either before or after the cycle... yes, nurse, the cycle will be my first priority... So, seven to twelve days is a not-unreasonable estimate?... Thank you, thank you."

Linkorama

So the Times alerted me to an utterly awful piece in Time. By a "doctor."

Susan had chosen me because she had researched my education, read a paper I had written, determined my university affiliation and knew where I lived. It was a little too much — as if she knew how stinky and snorey I was last Sunday morning. Yes, she was simply researching important aspects of her own health care. Yes, who your surgeon is certainly affects what your surgeon does. But I was unnerved by how she brandished her information, too personal and just too rude on our first meeting.

Every doctor knows patients like this. They're called "brainsuckers." By the time they come in, they've visited many other docs already — somehow unable to stick with any of them. They have many complaints, which rarely translate to hard findings on any objective tests. They talk a lot. I often wonder, while waiting for them to pause, if there are patients like this in poor, war-torn countries where the need for doctors is more dire.

Let me ask: is this really about Google, or about annoying hypochondriac patients? Sure, I can believe that easier availability of information makes those who misuse it harder to deal with. But I also can't imagine what it must have been like to do an IVF cycle in, like, 1990—to take that huge leap, make that huge monetary bet, inject those drugs and cry those tears—without knowing what it had been like, what it is like, for other people going through it. Do I ask my doctors more questions because of what I read on line? You bet. And that's how it should be.

What's really ugly about the article is the open contempt for patients. Sure, he changed "Susan"'s name—but I'm shocked the author left his own on the article.

Meanwhile, there's a James Lang First Person column that I—gasp!— sort of agree with. I'm using Blackboard for the first time this semester too, so far just for doing things I used to hard code on my own page, and it just isn't all bad. Some of the committees I'm also use it for distributing documents, and I'm trying to convince my department to do the same. (We're, um, not meeting enough this semester. No, really, we're not, and it's a problem, and having another forum for group discussions would, I think, be helpful.)

Teaching Ergo 101 again

It's been nearly seven years since I did. Back then I taught a whole lot of sections; it was how my department tried to make my life easier, by giving me lots of reruns early on. Yes, it's a service course, but a place to recruit majors too.

I like teaching first-years. They're so hopeful! You can get them to try anything! (Let's not think too hard about how that's probably even more true outside the classroom...) And during my first three or four years, I got to watch lots of students come in and grow and change (the haircuts! the confidence!) and graduate.

I'm teaching 101 again now. Back in the day I'd put together a pretty structured course, including a sharply choreographed first day: introductions, breakout groups, mini-presentations, discussions. So much activity planned, in fact, that it's now clear that going through the syllabus and expectations only used to take me 10 minutes.

This time around? 35 minutes. Yes, faculty grow and change too, and not always for the better. Those mini-presentations will happen at our, um, next meeting.

Response to a small crisis

A male student comes to your office extremely upset. During the conversation, he starts to cry.

Do you offer a tissue, or not?

(I didn't, but I'm not completely sure why. It mattered, though, that the tears came from academically-focused rage and shame, rather than grief over some outside matter.)

Is the professorette being sluttish, or coy?

I. Extra credit for attending a marginally relevant lecture by a famous visitor? Sure! Except: those points will interact with the existing homework rules so baroquely that if you can figure out that you're in bad enough shape to benefit significantly from the freebies, then you actually deserve some academic remuneration after all.

II. We're back at that decision-making/risk/imperfect-information/(ir)rationality point again, in my "pssst! wanna fulfill some distribution requirements, punk?" course. After we discuss some medical examples, an overconfident student comes up. "Isn't it true for pregnancy tests that like, if it's negative, then that might or might not be true, but if it's positive, then you're in trouble?"

I involuntarily take a deep breath, stare into space for a moment, then answer, "Actually, I know way too much about that example." Even this student isn't so oafish as to ask another question as I furiously gather my notes.

Speaking up

I just spoke at a faculty meeting for the first time. (This is my ninth year at Granolan.)

My point was politely ignored, and I was on the losing side of the ensuing vote, but a crusty near-emeritus introduced himself and shook my hand heartily—"That's what we meant!"—on the way out.