Merry Christmas!

For those of you who celebrate, have a wonderful Christmas! I hope you've been good and that Santa brings you what you asked for. I also hope that you are NOT visited by Krampas (who I just learned about yesterday and think is the most awesome thing I've ever heard of- Christmas needs something scary!)

We're enjoying our first full day in Warm State (it was in the 70s today and I went outside barefoot a couple of times). It's been a lazy day, but the afternoon turned out to be pretty busy with taking kids to a movie and some last minute grocery shopping. We're not doing anything for Christmas Eve, but tomorrow a few more people will be joining us. I'm going to make an apple crisp later and help cook tomorrow. It should be fun!

I hope you are all safe, warm, and with family and/or friends. Cheers!

Heading South & Goodbye 2009

Grades are in (since Saturday night) and we are headed to Warm State tomorrow to stay with friends for Christmas. It should be fun, but I always get stressed before traveling (my OCD tendencies convince me that I'll forget something crucial) and we have a LONG drive ahead of us. We are taking two days each way to drive down Boring Interstate. It will be fine, but I think I'll feel better once we hit the road tomorrow. I don't know if I'll get the urge to blog while we're gone, so I'll likely write again when we get back.

So, I guess it's time for an end of year post. I did this last year, too:

January 2009: Happy new year and goodbye to 2008- you won't be missed.

February 2009: Wow. I have not been blogging.

March 2009: I hope, anyway. I really hadn't meant to be so quiet over here.

April 2009: It's been a year since this happened, and I have totally come to accept it and feel like I have moved on, but it still makes me sad to think about it.

May 2009: It's finals week here at Small College Town U and I'm giving my only in-class exam today.

June 2009: Ah, summer. No teaching. Small College Town is peaceful and quiet except for the few students around taking summer classes and coming for freshman orientation.

July 2009: I don't mind, actually. We have no plans, so it isn't spoiling anything for us to get rained on today.

August 2009: We are canceling our end-of-summer vacation to visit friends.

September 2009: So much for getting back to blogging more regularly.

October 2009: I have been in Adopted Home State for the past few days on an unscheduled trip.

November 2009: ...to get me blogging again! Yes, I'm still here.

December 2009: OK- now things are getting pretty pathetic if I missed my own 4th blog-o-versary!

Considering how light my blogging has been, I'm happy that I at least posted once in every month! There are actually a couple of months with only one post. Sad. 2009 has been fairly uneventful (in a good way). Although, I still feel like I need to get going on some research things (looking for new opportunities) since The Big Grant ends in 2010.

I hope everyone (who celebrates) has a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope that 2010 brings you all the things that you hope for. Peace to you and yours.

Thoughts from grading jail... updated

Why do so many students not follow directions?

Why do I feel like I am grading in slow motion?

I really need to finish this particular set of grading this weekend, because I have lot of other things to grade/work on this week.

Maybe another beer would help...

I'm DONE with that class. They take the final tomorrow (which is graded by my TA), so I just need to calculate grades. And finish up the other two classes- at least they are small.

It's finally over...

... and I vow NEVER to teach five days a week again. Whew!

Today was the last day of classes and I am so ecstatic that I don't have to get up at 6:30 any more. This morning when my alarm went off, I thought "at least it's the last time!" I'm teaching my earliest class at 10:10 am next semester (and not teaching at all on Tuesdays and Thursdays), so I'm relieved to have this rough schedule done. I still have a week of exams and a mountain of grading to do, but I as I sit here in my fleece robe, smelling like a LUSH blackberry bath bomb, I'm breathing a huge sigh of relief. I'm also remembering that I had made of list of academic new year's resolutions and wondering how I did. Here they are:

1. I will not let the students in my big first-year course get me down. If they are obnoxious, I will ask them to leave and not get all worked up about it.

I think I did pretty well with this one. I did have a couple of emails that rubbed me the wrong way, but I can't think of any students who were just the bane of my existence this semester. I never asked anyone to leave class, but nobody was being disruptive either.

2. I will do my darnedest to get students to participate in discussion in my upper level courses. And I will try to bite my tongue, so that I don't take over the whole discussion!

I'm sure I could have done better with this one. I was probably better than I have been in the past, but I know that I probably monopolized a couple of discussions over the semester. I think discussion were better than in the past, but I think it's because I am more willing to sit and wait for students to speak up. I also had some great students this semester, and they contributed in class.

3. I will keep exercising at least four days a week (ideally five) when classes start. I may have to revert back to my EARLY schedule of yesteryear, but I am going to do it, dammit!

I was doing really well with this until I caught a cold right before Thanksgiving. I was severely congested and coughing for weeks (I'm finally just about over it now!) I have gotten out of the habit, but now that my schedule is more flexible, I am going to get back into it.

4. I will try to have a positive attitude about life in general. This has usually been easy for me, but has seemed harder over the last year or so. I need to shed some cynicism.

Wow- I didn't do well with this one at all. I have still been plagued with periods of depression and feelings of hopelessness about the future. This is a hard one- sometimes it's hard to pull myself out of feelings- even if I know they are irrational. We'll see how I am next semester.

So, I had planned to get some grading done tonight, but that has not happened. I wrapped presents with D instead, which was fun. I'll be in grading jail this weekend for sure...

Happy Belated Blog-o-versary to Me!

OK- now things are getting pretty pathetic if I missed my own 4th blog-o-versary! Of course, I haven't been writing over here that much lately, so I hardly feel like like I've accomplished something with this milestone. However, I am not willing to give up on this space. Even if my posts are rarer these days, I don't feel like I want to abandon this blog. I actually have ideas for posts swimming around in my head some days, but then don't have the motivation or time to actually write those posts. As much as I love Facebook, I still like having this pseudonymous space to write, too. There are plenty of things going on at work that I want to post about (some of which are escaping me right now!) and I could never write about them on FB in the same way.

Maybe my lack of writing here is also linked to my lack of writing in general. I have not been very productive in my research lately, despite being in the last year of my first Big Grant. I am thrilled with RA this year and have high hopes for making some good progress during our last year of funding, but I have been so swamped with teaching that I haven't done much work myself. I'm starting to wonder how I managed to get tenure, because my teaching load is the same as it was during the 2004/2005 through 2006/2007 academic years. I was getting research done, writing papers, writing proposals AND teaching my full load. Now, I can't seem to do much more than just teach and do grading and class prep. So, maybe that's part of it. I have not been reading blogs much lately, either, though. And that's even more sad, since I am not as connected with many of you. However, I am friends with lots of you on FB now, so I am in touch in that way at least.

So, here I sit, four years after starting this blog. I am sitting at the same desk, but typing on my MacBook instead of my desktop PC (which I still have!) I'd like to get back into the groove of writing for research, and maybe writing over here is a good start. You've all heard that one before, right?