Summertime

A rare mid-day blog post. Yesterday was one of those days that just wouldn't end. It was stacked with class and meetings from beginning to end.

I did have one free moment, though, as I was walking from one meeting to the next. It was a beautiful day out and I sat for a moment on a bench outside my laboratory building. At that moment, I heard the sound of a locust in the tree - you know that sort of weird, Doppler-effect-y, morroccas-shaking sound they make? It was instantly picked up by other locusts in other trees, and it instantly transported me back to my childhood, when I would be outside playing in the summer. It would be August, and it would be hot, and the air would be calm and still and oppressive. I would be playing in the kiddie pool, or with the hose or sprinkler, trying to keep cool outside as my grandmother watched over my sister and I playing. We would avoid going in the house which my father kept at a draconianly low temperature during the summer (he loved his AC). And above it all, I remember the sounds of locusts on the air, disturbed by no other sound. That sound is so summer to me, and I so rarely hear it living in suburban Boston.

The other thing I miss is lightning bugs, or fireflies. We used to have thousands of them at home in the early to mid summer, lighting up the trees and the grass. We could catch twenty or thirty a night and keep them in old jelly jars with grass and air holes punched in the lid. They don't seem to like it this far north, because I have lived here almost eight years now, and have yet to see a lightning bug in suburban Boston.

In other news, class is going well, but trying to sandwich 14 weeks of a regular semester course into 6 weeks is a challenge. I feel like I never stop talking once I hit the classroom.

Finding the Zone

A few months ago, G-Fav had a post about "Flow", that state where everything just sort of clicks and you fire on all cylinders. Time sort of fades into the background and before you know it hours have passed.

I have always felt at home in the front of a classroom, ever since my first lecture back in 2004. Today I started teaching a condensed 6-week summer course, and when I started talking at 8 AM this morning to a bunch of bleary-eyed students back for their first class in 6 months, I experienced "Flow".

I am increasingly convinced that I really do love teaching, and that I am good at it. A week ago I received my teaching evals for the spring semester. This was the second time that I had taught this subject, and I didn't have as good a feel for that group of students as I had for the first group that I taught in that subject. The first group I taught this particular class to I had taught in a previous prerequisite, and as such had established a relationship with them; they knew me and my expectations, I knew them and their abilities, and we co-existed quite well. They were hard working, dedicated students and they liked me and I them. I had excellent teaching evals that semester.

This past spring I taught the course again, to students that I had not had in the prerequisite course, and as such, we had no pre-existing relationship. They are a good class, but were much more reticent and harder to get to know. I had to work a lot harder to draw them out and engage them, and we definitely did not have the easy give-and-take that I enjoyed with the previous group. I fully expected that my evals for that offering would be lower than for the previous group.

I was pleasantly surprised when they were actually higher. It was a nice reaffirmation of my abilities, and some subtle proof to myself that the first set of evals from a particular group of students wasn't a fluke or beginners' luck. My teaching evaluations have consistently been very good; so good in fact that the Dean recently talked to my department head about getting me involved in teaching some freshman sections to shore up some problem areas.

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague of mine a week or so ago. We both started at the university at the same time, both are assistant professors on the tenure track, and approximately the same age. Our careers, though, seem destined to take very different paths. She loves working with her graduate students, writing grant proposals, and collaborating with other scholars in many different areas. She is a good teacher, and does a minimal amount of service activities. She had a super-big-name advisor in graduate school, and has many former labmates in academia. She gets invited to give talks, and is well regarded as a scholar in her field.

I on the other hand, have struggled mightily with being a scholar in my field. My former advisor is also well known in her field, but it is a field that fostered many natural collaborations with industry, and few of her students went into academia until very recently. I struggle a great deal with being a mentor and advisor to my three graduate students, and I absolutely loathe grant writing, and have difficulty 'selling' my ideas to potential funding agencies. I am however, I think, an above-average teacher, devote much of my time and energy to the undergraduate program, advise several undergraduate groups, and am in general very involved in service activities at the department, college, and university level.

Which one of us will get tenure? Both of us? Neither? It seems hard to say right now. It seems clear from a variety of workshops and other mentoring events that I attend that the types of contributions that she is making are more highly regarded by the college and the university. I realize that I am certainly not the first person to feel like this, but some days it feels incredibly unfair that my contributions are not as highly regarded because the results are less tangible.

It seems especially wrong on a morning when I walk into a classroom, establish a presence, and get a bunch of sophomores who haven't been in school for over six months to laugh and be interested in thermodynamics at eight in the morning.