Geeky Mom

I decided not to write this morning. I’ve been writing every morning since last Friday. That’s 6 days in a row. So I think I deserved some time off for good behavior. Plus, I’m just downright exhausted and don’t think I could think straight. I spent a good deal of last night tweaking the presentation–almost done. So I hadn’t read anything to write about. I’m sure I could have written something, but since the chapter is primarily a lit review, I don’t think it would have been productive. In general, the morning writing sessions are going pretty well. I definitely think I’ll have a decent draft by Sunday. It’s still much rougher than I’d like it to be but hey, what can you do?

I have only been poking my head in the blog world a tiny bit. I miss everyone. Reading blogs really does get my brain working a lot of the time and I miss that too. I haven’t even been able to peek in at work. Yesterday, 15 minute lunch. Sigh. Things don’t settle down until next Friday. Gah! Then I’m sure something else will come up. It’s all good, I guess.

I’m sure everyone is feeling similar. I’m not grading or anything, but I’m working on a presentation and organizing a program during the day and writing the dissertation in the early morning and reading for the dissertation at night. I should have a draft by this weekend that I’m going to have someone read. The presentation is next Thursday and school ends then too. I’m on a search committee and we begin interviews this Friday. Several of my days include barely enough time for a potty break. Bleh. Calgon, take me away.

Since I’m finishing my Ph.D. (hopefully) and have now taught a class and am teaching another in the fall, people often ask me if I’m planning to slide back into full-time teaching. I’ve definitely thought about it, but I think I like where I am, even with its frustrations. The one attractive thing about teaching is more control over my day. I could begin and end work whenever I liked. There might even be days with no classes and no obligations. But the work load (in a 4/4 likely scenario) could be backbreaking. The grading might be endless and the rewards few.

What I like about my situation now is that each side of the equation, teacher and technologist, informs the other. What I do in the classroom lets me know the kinds of things I might pursue in my role as a technologist. For example, I taught in a “smart” classroom whose layout was worse than horrible. The space was inflexible. There was barely room at the front for the teacher (and I didn’t always want to be at the front anyway). Using the computer and screen precluded using the chalkboard at the front. This experience led me to discuss these issues with our team of people who plan for classroom technology. It led to, among other things, the use of tablet pcs in similar spaces and to making sure that new spaces did not cover the board with a screen.

As a technologist, I am able to share my teaching experiences with those who come to me for help with using technology. I can say what I’ve tried and how it’s worked and how to manage the extra time and energy using new technology often requires. I don’t pretend that technology is a magic wand that solves every pedagogical issue and even admit that it may create new ones. When presented with problems, I look for appropriate solutions that might be useful pedagogically and not just the lastest new gadget.

Some, I know, find this dual role I play problematic. I’ve noted many times the desire on some people’s part to have me play the mechanic. And I don’t mind playing that role at times. Sometimes it’s nice simply to fix a technical problem or answer a question and move on. But I do know a bit about teaching, both from experience and from extensive research. I won’t pretend to know what content one should include in a biology class, but I might offer ways of presenting that content or of having students interact with it or build their own. Sometimes those suggestions are viewed as stepping over my bounds.

On the other side of the fence, there are staff in my department who don’t know about my experience teaching and the knowledge it’s given me about the way faculty and students really use technology. A few years ago, for example, we had a discussion about the use of laptops. Why would faculty need a laptop anyway? Don’t they have computers on their desks or at home? I had to remind them that many faculty do research remotely. They visit libraries or archaeological sites and may need a laptop for notes, for writing up reports, for storing and analyzing data right there on site. That fight is long over as many of my colleagues are now laptop owners themselves and value the freedom of computing anywhere they want. Now we’re on to discussing tablets!

I also get a lot of the perks of teaching without the grading. I love helping students. I love working with them, whether it’s on their writing or putting together a multimedia presentation. I get to do that every summer with the internship program I run and throughout the year, students come to my lab for advice and technical help. I also get to do research, as much or as little as I want, with no pressure for publishing in the “right” places in the “right” amount. It’s really gravy. And a perk I get that most faculty don’t: a 7-hour day. I leave the office and leave the work behind.

I like the back and forth of all of this, of being the go-between. That’s why I signed up for this gig and that’s why I still find it interesting, if sometimes challenging. But what’s life without its challenges.

I got this cool trick here.

I took the day off from work today. Midway through yesterday, I was feeling tired. I was emotionally drained, intellectually drained, just drained. I needed a day where I didn’t have to do anything, where there were no emails to answer or things to schedule. I got up this morning and spent two hours writing. It was good writing and I’ve vowed to myself that I will do this every morning. Despite Bolker’s suggestion that writing 5 pages a day is a better approach than setting a specific time limit, the time limit works better for me. I like knowing there’s an end and I can push myself to the end if need be. Lately, though I’ve been writing anyway, I’ve found writing at the end of the day difficult. My mind is already filled with stuff and my body is tired. I’ll be setting the alarm back a half-hour and slaving away.

After I finished my writing, I told myself I wasn’t obligated to do anything else. And so I didn’t. I played Civilization and Diner Dash. I made a quick trip to the grocery store. I watched What Not to Wear and The Office. Mr. Geeky made me dinner while the kids were down the street eating with friends.

I’ve noticed this pattern in myself. When I get really stressed out and frustrated, mostly in an intellectual way (trying to figure something out or solve a problem or something), I need some serious down time in order to work out the problem. I need to distract my brain from itself. I give it a toy to play with so it won’t worry itself over how to begin chapter one or think things like, “what if I’ve left something out.” My brain is like a small child (maybe I am too).

A day of not thinking, of delivering virtual meals to virtual people and conquering virtual worlds. Escape, sweet escape.

This morning I stepped in dog crap. I don’t have a dog. There’s a city ordinance dictating that one must clean up after one’s dog. I drove all the way to work enveloped by the smell of dog poop, thinking that people were just doing an awful lot of landscaping. When I was still smelling it while waiting at the light next to the Starbucks, I knew I had dog poop on me somewhere. I parked the car and shuffled across the grass to my building. Then I scurried into the bathroom, took my shoe off and washed it in the sink. Yuck.

I decide I need some coffee. I go into the kitchen and wash out my cup, noticing that the hot water isn’t working. Oh well. I reach for the pot. No coffee. No hot water. No way.

I call my buddy upstairs to see if he wants to go get coffee at the campus cafe. Sure, he says.

As we leave the building, I say, “Here’s what kind of day it’s gonna be. I stepped in dog poop.”

Such good suggestions from everyone about my class. It’s been officially approved, so I’m plowing ahead. When I was a grad student, I would have walked down the hall until I got to an office filled with other grad students and started bouncing ideas off of them for my class. With the web, I don’t even have to get up off the couch. I’ll throw up some more ideas in the weeks to come as my syllabus takes shape (need to have something in by May-ish). I’m calling the class “Telling Tales Out of School.” There may need to be a requisite colon. We’ll see.

I am rewarding my 5 pages of crap with some video game playing. What sucks is I think I said everything I have to say in those 5 pages. I know, hard to believe.

Realizing you have two weeks to prepare a presentation. Thank FSM!

I’m planning to teach again in the fall. The program I teach for is our writing program. Faculty from various disciplines teach in this program (though it is usually heavy on English and Humanities profs). They are encouraged to come up with topics in their discipline that would appeal to a broad audience. Last year, of course, Mr. Geeky and I co-taught a course on blogging. This year, I’m going it alone. My plan is to use writing about college and specifically, professors. Right now, I’m thinking of such books as The Straight Man and White Noise. I might have them watch Paper Chase and/or episodes of that tv show about a women’s college with Richard Dreyfus whose name escapes me now. I also want to include articles and books about university education that are more analytical. And I might have students explore academic blogs.

I thought it would be fun, since the course also serves as an introduction to college life (at least the academic side of it), to analyze and explore that life, both as represented in fiction and movies and as subject of study. Any thoughts from the academic blogosphere? What books or articles would you teach?