At the risk of belaboring the point, beating a dead horse, and continuing ad nauseam, I have to say again that my students are a pretty decent bunch. As I said in an earlier post, they were almost as excited and relieved as I was to hear that I had received tenure. In the months [...]
Archive for March, 2009
Pizza
Posted in teaching on March 27, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Scenes from Campus
Posted in Uncategorized on March 25, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Setting: An annual campus social event.
Dramatis Personae: Hobgoblin, Biology Friend (who also went up for tenure this year)
BIO FRIEND: Hey! How are you?
HOB: Good! How about you? [Shaking hands.]
BF: Good.
There is a short silence as the two look at each other carefully.
HOB: So you’re good?
BF: Yes. And you?
HOB: Good.
BF [looking out of the corner of [...]
Relief
Posted in teaching on March 24, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Thank you to everyone who left the kind comments on yeterday’s post! I have been so worried about the tenure decision coming down that I feel completely wrung out now that the stress has been pulled away. It seems almost as if the stress were the only thing keeping me upright.
The reaction to my news [...]
Some Good News
Posted in teaching on March 23, 2009 | 20 Comments »
As I was driving home today, my cell phone rang, and I, being a very bad Connecticut driver, answered. It was Dorothy, telling me that Tony had called and left a message. Because I had answered without turning down the radio first, and because I apparently am losing my hearing in my old age, I [...]
Fast Old Men
Posted in cycling on March 15, 2009 | 3 Comments »
One minute, thirty-five seconds.
That’s how long it took the Masters to ride the final lap of today’s criterium. Everyone around here knows that some of the fastest racers in the peloton are the old guys, the guys over 40, and today’s race seemed to prove that again. To put that lap time in perspective, here [...]
Influential Writers
Posted in memes on March 12, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Dorothy has this meme up over at her place, and it looks very interesting. I’ll try to think of the writers who influenced me the most, and all of you can see just how different we are. I like her idea of trying to put them in a personal chronological order, so I’ll make the [...]
First Race Fog
Posted in cycling on March 10, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Sunday was the first race of the season, since the previous week’s race fell victim to the weather and got itself canceled. I had signed up to do two races–the Masters 40+ race and the category 3/4 race…which just happen to be back-to-back.
I was a little worried about the first race of the season because [...]
Fatigue Is a Sneaky Bastard
Posted in teaching on March 5, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Ordinarily, when I am under a lot of stress, I suffer even more from insomnia than I usually do. Lately, though, I have been falling asleep almost as soon as I go to bed around 9:30 or 10. I do wake up very early, but that is at least partly Muttboy’s fault, who seems to [...]
March Massacre
Posted in teaching on March 4, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I’m not sure how much detail I want to reveal here, but I’ll try to tell my story without compromising anyone’s privacy. The economic hard times have hit my university fairly hard, though probably not as hard as some other institutions. We have a small endowment that lost something like 25% in the last year, [...]
