Michigan and Waterloo

Way back in October, we took M. on a big road trip: first, we visited Ann Arbor, our old haunt:

Few of our friends still remain, but we could catch up with collaborators and former mentors – and now my cousin David is there. It was a disorienting feeling, to see the ways in which everything has changed, yet are pretty much the same. College town life!

We headed further west for a stop at Hope College, where I was invited to give a talk at a World Languages conference. My best friend from high school, now also a language professor, co-organized the conference, and it was such a treat both to see him in his element and to visit with his beautiful family.

From Holland, MI, we drove east across the border to visit my family in Waterloo, Ontario. We stayed with my aunt and uncle and got to spend precious time with my Ye-ye in the nursing home where he now resides:

I feel so sad that my Grandma didn't get to spend more time with M. She would be so tickled by M.'s enjoyment of books and her constant, tuneful humming. My Ye-ye doesn't know who we are anymore, and he won't remember a thing about our visit, but that's okay. Having a baby has taught me that every day is a special gift to be cherished for what it is, and these were definitely days together to be cherished.

$$$Taxpayer Dollars$$$

This week, I finally walked over with Maddie to our local public library and signed up for an account. As I opened my wallet, I realized that the card slots were mostly full, and I'd have to move one card to the reserve/little-used interior pocket in order to make room for my new library card. With a pang, I demoted my New York Public Library card – a symbol of my urban intellectual life, the place where I conduct research – in favor of my Mineola card. Sigh. (Though I should note that this goes to show that I haven't used my NYPL card in months anyway...)

The good news is that my local library is pretty cool! Look at all the swag they've already given me:

I'm pretty sure M. doesn't need so much external encouragement regarding early literacy (lol, I'M HER MOM), but it's still nice to receive the support. After all, the property taxes in our county are OUTRAGEOUS, so I feel like I should use the library resources as much as possible.

To that end, M. and I attended our first "lapsit" class today. It's geared for 4-month-olds to 2-year-olds, so M. is totally too young. But I was invited to sign up, and so we went, and M. slept or stared at the ceiling while we sang songs, recited rhymes, and flapped our arms around in unison. Actually, I think she enjoyed hearing the sounds of other babies crying, laughing, and babbling. Plus, it's nice to get out of the house and walk to the park/library. As the months go by, I'm sure I'll find new ways to get my taxpayer dollars back from the library!

Action shot of M. spitting out her pacifier

Mein Doktorvater

I had a very meaningful interaction at the conference last weekend with my college senior thesis advisor, Prof. F.! I've always adored him, and I had a really good (if challenging) experience writing my senior thesis under his supervision. I wrote my second junior paper with him, in which he forced me to articulate my own theory of the proper method of interpreting a Greek tragedy; it was very painful, and the final product was not very good, to put it mildly. I then asked him to advise my senior thesis, which I wanted to write on Euripides' Bacchae. He told me no, he did not want to read a senior thesis on the Bacchae. Hahaha! I look forward to the day when I can say that sort of thing to my own hapless students. After some wandering in the desert, I ended up working on the Christus Patiens, the Byzantine passion play and cento written out of modified lines of Euripides. I cried many tears in my thesis carrel, and somehow wrote 120 pages in the final month. And lo, now I'm an academic.

Sadly, I also always felt like Prof. F. never really remembered me and didn't really care about what happened to me after I left for graduate school. We'd see each other briefly at conferences, but he never stopped to chat or ask me about my progress, etc. It's possible that he simply didn't recognize me (though I am constantly told that I look exactly the same as I did x years ago, which may or may not be a compliment).

Now that I have a job in the field, though, he stops to talk to me! And this year, at a reception, he told me, "I've never liked the term Doktorvater [the German term for a male doctoral supervisor; mine, though, is a Doktormutter]. It's too patriarchal, patronizing, and all of that. But I feel differently when I think about your thesis. See, at minimum, a supervisor is supposed to read an entire thesis and make sure there are no glaring errors. That's the minimum. At the maximum, the supervisor adopts the same quellen ["sources"] and treats the problem as a joint problem between professor and student. And that's what I feel like we did with the Christus Patiens. We were digging through the language, which I'd never read, digging through these French articles, wondering what it all meant...that was fun."

I was so moved! I still remember this college experience so vividly – hitting the library when I woke up, breaking for meals, packing up at 11:45 pm; wading through my own mental mush and the frustration of not seeing how the ideas would add up; finally turning in something that I thought might have accomplished something. In some ways, I still think that my senior thesis was the most original work I've ever done (mostly because no one else bothers to write on that text). I'd like to turn it into an article someday – and I'll remember to thank Prof. F. in the first footnote.

previous occupancy

My office has been moved yet again, and I'm just settling into a new location. I wonder who had this office before me? There aren't many clues. Here's a label on the bookshelf right by the desk:

What kind of instruments? Musical? Surgical? Why do the pictures get their own place on the shelf?

And then there's this:

This magnet takes me right back to late elementary/early middle school – I could imagine this on a locker, or pinned onto a backpack. Maybe the pattern of diagonal stripes would have made for a good Trapper Keeper cover! I think I'll keep it right there.

the nerdly pleasures

There are a lot of not-so-great things about being a junior academic. But there's still one thing I love: I get to spend time in beautiful libraries and read nerdy books! It's not so easy anymore; from 2001-2013, I was no more than a twenty-minute walk from a world class library. Not only did those libraries have incredible resources, they also had the will and motivation to make those resources as accessible as possible. I could order books delivered by hand to my mailbox; I could ask for articles in the stacks to be PDFed and emailed to me, so that I didn't need to search for them myself. Ah, the halcyon days of yore!

Learning to use the academic resources in New York has not been easy. Like so many other things in NYC, everything you want is available, in theory, but in practice, those things are difficult to access, prohibitively expensive, oversubscribed, or inconveniently far away. And so it is with the books. To get reader's privileges at the library at Columbia, I had to apply to a University Seminar and be accepted; but I'm not allowed to check out anything or use the online resources from off-site, so I have to be physically in the building (an hour and twenty minutes from home) in order to access the information. The New York Public Library is easier to get into, but most of the scholarly books are kept in New Jersey, so you have to order them a few days ahead of time, and even the books on site take over an hour to be delivered to you from the closed stacks by the library gnomes. You can't take those books home with you either.

I complain a lot about the schlep and the waiting, but once I get through them, it's so good. Here's Columbia, with its special non-circulating reading room devoted to Ancient/Medieval Studies:

 

 The view, when I need to rest my eyes

The NYPL, after sunset

 

And here's a book that I couldn't access anywhere - except at the NYPL. It's a 1912 dissertation written in Latin by a German scholar, and, as you can see, it's just crumbling into bits. No library in all of ILL was willing to ship it out (all copies are probably in similarly poor condition), so it's a good thing I could find a local copy!

AT LAST

I couldn't be more giddy to announce that Dave signed a contract this morning for a tenure-track position in Long Island! I feel like we just won the lottery – two tenure track jobs, near New York City, close to both our families. It was quite stressful and up-and-down with negotiations down to the wire, so it's a relief that Dave has made a final decision and signed on the dotted line.

In an uncharacteristic anticipatory act, Dave and I explored the campus during his last visit here:

I'm sure that Dave will find different challenges and difficulties in his new position, but I'm also optimistic that the move will provide him new opportunities to grow. The next few years, as we both develop our tenure files, will involve a lot of work. But at least we'll be together!

I've said many times that I've felt like our marriage hasn't fully begun yet, that we've been treading water and looking to the future. And now the future is here! And things will (hopefully) come together quickly – I want to start looking at nearby apartments soon, and Dave has already started packing up his stuff in Michigan. And once we get settled into a place together (late August, early September?), you'll all have to come visit us! (I promise we'll be not-too-far from the city!)

Teaching evaluations

I just got my teaching evaluations back from last spring, and I'm relieved to say that they were very positive. Phew! I've given some pretty nasty evaluations myself in the past, which I now feel ashamed of. If I get negative reviews in the future, I hope to be able to take them in stride, like the professors in the video below. Perhaps you've seen the Jimmy Kimmel segments of celebrities reading meaning tweets about themselves? Here is (Canadian) "Professors Read Mean Reviews About Themselves":

Jokes aside, the teaching evaluations helped me understand better what students do care about. They like it when their professor seems organized, responds to emails or is willing to make appointments outside of official office hours. They like it when the professor is willing to entertain their (sometimes ridiculous) ideas and at least appears to be enthused about the subject matter.

These things seem separate to me from what I used to think was most important: mastery of content. My greatest fear used to be that students would ask me questions and I would give the wrong answer, or have no idea what to say. I've learned more about my field, so I feel more confident, and I've also learned that students don't mind when I say, "Here's my first response, but I may revise it upon further thought and better research."

I wish someone had told me earlier that so much of successful college teaching is not necessarily about the information. It's about writing a well-paced syllabus that you'll be able to keep up with, posting things online when you say you will, setting clear expectations for exams and papers and then grading them promptly, responding to students, and being glad to be in the classroom. One of the most obvious ways for me to improve my teaching after this semester is to end class on time. I never thought it was a big deal to run 2-3 minutes over, since many students would linger to talk to me after class every day. But looking at the evaluations, there must have been multiple students who were running to their next class, probably in a different part of campus, and my running over made things difficult for them every day. It hadn't even occurred to me! This means that I'll have to improve the way I structure my lectures (not leave the most important point to the very end), pace myself better (I tend to relax at 40 minutes in, instead of keeping up the pace), and most importantly, remember that mine isn't the only class in the world.

Rummy and Me

Donald Rumsfeld '54 attended Reunions this year and marched with his class in kimono and all:

(Picture from the Daily Prince twitter account: @princetonian)

I never thought I would say this, but I've got Rummy on the mind. Especially this oft-mocked quote:

Reports that say there's -- that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.

(People gave him such a hard time for saying this, but I must say, the ideas are perfectly clear and well-expressed. Sure, the use of some synonyms might have helped him out a bit. But I'd rather see everyone else get used to the verbal adjective. We had to translate this passage into Latin in my prose composition course in graduate school, which was fairly straightforward compared to the quote from George W. Bush that was also assigned.)

Okay, the context: Dave is in negotiation with two different schools in the NY area! I'm so proud to say that he was awarded a major federal grant for his research a few weeks ago. Now it's time to decide what place will be the home for his research for the next several years. We've got some known knowns: physical location, commute times, dollar figures (well, the last bit is being worked out, but we should know eventually). There are some known unknowns, too (colleagues' personalities, arrival times of promised technical equipment, my future feelings about my current job). But what about the unknown unknowns? Or even the unknown knowns (if you buy Žižek's extension of the argument) – those assumptions and beliefs which we refuse to recognize within ourselves?

Fortunately, this is a decision of no geopolitical consequence, nor will any lives be saved or lost by this. I'm just reminded now of how often we must make a leap with our big decisions. You can't really know what makes a college a good fit for you until you're done with college; same with graduate school. Let's not even talk about major career changes, marriage, children! I suppose this is what makes new steps exciting...but I am also becoming more risk-averse with time. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what our options are, and then decide on what seems best right now...

Post-scriptum: Since I mentioned Žižek above, I here give you one of my top 10 favorite Onion gags. I don't know why, but I can't stop laughing at it:

Kids these days

I'd like to record something I learned about my students from reading their final papers: they are much better at writing about visual images than they are at writing about texts. Throughout the semester, I've had my students do close readings of important passages; I've also asked them to analyze a painting nearly every class, looking for details that convey the artist's interpretation of a specific myth. For the final paper, students had a choice of writing about a painting depicting a particular myth or comparing two different texts that treat the same basic mythological episode.

I was surprised by the results: the vast majority – and all of the "weaker" students – chose to write about an image, and nearly all of these wrote more successful papers than I had anticipated. These are students who have a lot of difficulty picking notable details out of texts – they aren't very sensitive to word choice, or tone (e.g., sarcastic, bombastic, self-aggrandizing), or rhetorical effect. Yet, when given an image to work with, they find meaning in color, facial expression, lighting, posture, composition, perspective, etc. It was great!

Short of assigning all visual analysis exercises, what to do with this experience? One thing that I might do is teach close reading as an analogue to visual analysis. That is, start with students' strengths and allow them to build their confidence – yes, they know how to observe, comment, interpret, and form that into an argument about a painting! And we use the same skills with close reading; we just transfer those skills onto textual material. Part of the issue is that it's easier for students to see that artists are interpreters, since they encounter the text first; I want them to see that writers are interpreters, too. Working with translations can be tricky as well.

I'll have to ponder this further. But I'll have plenty of time to do so – I don't think I'll be grading papers for another year and half, thanks to teaching release time! I'll still be teaching languages, but I'll be focused less on culture/literature/history curricula. I really enjoy teaching the culture stuff, but languages have always been my first love, so hurray!

A retirement party

A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a big party/fundraiser for the language program I direct. The occasion had two purposes: to celebrate the career of my predecessor and to establish a scholarship fund in his honor. In its forty-plus year history, my program had never held a fundraising event, so I was a bit nervous. Would anyone come? Would we raise any money? How embarrassing would it be if we went through all this work and sent out invitations and planned a big party, and then no one showed up and we raised $40? I had no experience with this type of event planning, and I wasn't receiving much help from others either. I got pretty stressed out.

But, as these things tend to do, it came together at the last minute. A colleague of mine offered the use of his brownstone and patio in Murray Hill as an event space. This saved us thousands of dollars. The college's Communications office designed beautiful invitations for us, and the college Foundation paid for printing the invitations. We sent out over 1200 invitations to alumni and friends of the program all over the world. And then I waited to see what would happen!

In addition to organizing the party, I was responsible for the food, drink, music, program, and general coordination. This was a lot of work. I wanted it to be all classy-like, but we had no money for it in the budget, and I was planning an event in Manhattan at someone else's house, which comes with its own complexities. In the end, about 60 people came, we raised over $20,000, and most of all, my former boss/mentor felt honored and appreciated. All four decades of alumni were represented, as well as many departmental colleagues. I was really inspired: I could look around the room and see the legacy of a 40-year teaching career. I don't think anyone will be saying the kinds of things about me that people were saying about my predecessor, but it is a worthy goal to aspire to!

 We got lucky with the weather: the previous day had dumped 5 inches of rain on the city, but the sun came out just two hours before the party was due to start. A vigorous sweep of the patio and quick arrangement of furniture made it the perfect place to chat over wine.

Presentation of the food!

People came and ate

Listening to toasts out on the patio

Including mine – can't resist a captive audience!

And my real triumph: my predecessor loves tapirs, and we gave him a book print from an 18th century French natural history text. I found the print, paired it with a quote (suggested by a colleague) from Euripides, and got the thing custom matted and framed, all within a week before the party!

I never want to do this again – I will find the money beforehand to hire a darn caterer – but I have to say, in the end, it was worth it.

some results

Today Dave returned to Michigan, and I remained in New York. We are not sure how long this arrangement will last, but I desperately hope to find a resolution in the next few months. In the meantime, I am reflecting on some lessons I learned from my therapist in the Fall. I found my therapist online, and he was a pleasant and encouraging person. He didn't have much to say that I haven't already thought about myself. And there isn't that much I can do mentally that will change the fundamentals of my situation: I still have to do my job every day; I still have to live apart from Dave; I still have to experience this difficult transition; I still have to wait for future plans to become clear. But there are a few things that he told me in our sessions that I want to record, so I can remind myself about them in the future:

• I am not my job. We all wear multiple hats, but I often view myself solely as an academic, rather than remembering that I'm also an individual, wife, daughter, sister, friend, community member. My career is an important and significant aspect of my life, but it is only part of the whole.
• I cannot control anyone or anything beyond myself. When things go wrong at work, I can try my hardest to fix them and put the program on the best possible footing. But in each of the issues, there are multiple parties involved. I have to accept that sometimes things won't be fixed the way I want them to, and that's not my fault.
• I am not trapped and alone. As much as I feel weighed down by my job, I need to remember that I have freedom – I have a loving spouse, the support of my family, wonderful friends; I have the financial resources to pay my bills and live in a safe and comfortable place; I am healthy and young. This is just one stage of my life; I have to go through it, but it will eventually turn into a new stage, even if I stay in this same job for many years. And even if everything in my career goes disastrously downhill, I will not be abandoned to some kind of failed life.

It's time for me to put this knowledge into action and get it done! The next eight months are going to be a wild ride...

Paean to the Sandblaster

I was in Chicago this past weekend for my national professional association's annual conference. Ah, Chicago in January! It was as unpleasant as it sounds. I drove my car with friends from Ann Arbor, through the remnants of a major snowstorm to arrive at the conference, and returned to Michigan yesterday through another winter storm. My trusty and swift steed, a 1999 Toyota Camry, aka "Sandblaster," was utterly reliable throughout it all, though. In gratitude, I have composed a song of victory in its honor, sung to the tune of "Sixteen, Going on Seventeen":

You are fourteen, going on fifteen,
Your frame begins to rust.
You need new tires,
You might catch on fire,
Your color is tan, beige, dust...

You are fourteen, going on fifteen,
Despite the blizzard-like snow
You were a smooth ride,
Not once did you slide,
Though visibility was so low!

I will spare the internet world further evidence of my poetic genius. Here it is this morning, appropriately blanketed with an evening's worth of snow:

You crushed it, Sandblaster!

New Year's Resolution: 2014

This year, I want to stop panicking, tamp down the anxiety, and do what I need to do. As this meme's popularity fades with 2013, I'm giving it one more boost into the new year:

Happy new year, everyone!

My Dinner with András

Just kidding, I've never had dinner with András Schiff. But he comes to perform often in Ann Arbor, and tonight was the fourth time I heard him play. During the concert, I was reflecting on how his concerts have punctuated various stages of my life in Michigan. I attended the first two concerts with my roommate Christa during my second year of graduate school. They were part of a 2-year series in which Schiff played the entire Beethoven sonata cycle. I remember feeling so smug that this project would only be performed in New York City, San Francisco, and...Ann Arbor. (Take that, coastal elites! We're just as important, plus I can get good tickets for $10.) At the time, I was so grateful that Christa was interested in going with me. I was struggling to find friends with similar interests in my graduate program, plus I was single at the time, and I was always anxious about having to go to classical music concerts alone.

By the next year, when I attended the third concert (still Beethoven sonatas), Christa had moved, and I took Dave as my date. But this was early in our relationship, and I was skeptical that things would work out: here's a guy who doesn't read literature for fun and had never heard of my field before! What did we have in common anyway?? I was planning to leave in a few months to spend a year abroad for research. I figured I may as well see where the relationship was going until I had to leave...

And now, the fourth concert (Goldberg Variations): Dave and I are newlyweds, trying to find our way out of Ann Arbor and to the same location. Now we're balancing two real careers and future family plans. Christa is married, has three dogs, and a beautiful baby girl in Boston. And those friends who didn't share my interests and left me feeling lonely? Now we text, call, email each other regularly; though some are as far away as Kabul and Munich, and others have left academia altogether, I treasure the experiences we've shared and the support we can offer each other.

The future is so hard for me envision right now. I'm struggling to define what it is I even want out of life, beyond knowing that Dave and I must. live. together. For a goal-oriented person, this is hard, especially when I control so little about the academic job-seeking process. But in the fall of 2007, when I walked up the hill with Christa, tickets in hand, I never would've imagined the circumstances under which I would write this András Schiff post in 2013. This gives me hope that in 2019, I'll again be writing about doubts diffused, challenges overcome, and relationships celebrated. It just seems a long time from now.

coping

I've been thinking a lot recently about a conversation I had with my department chair several weeks ago. It seemed fairly unremarkable at the time, but my chair started our discussion by saying, "I was thinking about all the issues facing us right now, and I started to feel overwhelmed, so I sat down and made a list of things that we do actually have control over, and I wanted to share them with you." Now I realize that he was teaching me about how to survive in this job: focus on what you can actually control.

Part of the issue with adjusting to my job is that the boundaries between what I can or can't control are not yet obvious to me. This is probably due to my inexperience. A crisis will arise, and I will respond as if there's something I can do about it; it won't become clear until later that the issue was out of my hands the entire time. This is frustrating, but educational, and I'll learn.

At the moment, there are some things I know I can control. I want to focus on them over the next several weeks:

• Research: this is my time to bang out some articles. Although my job still makes demands on my time, I do have the time and space to focus on my work. I need to make the most of it, because when this time is over, it won't be nearly as easy to spend an afternoon reading and writing. When I was sick of finishing my dissertation, I never imagined how precious I would consider my research time!
• Well-being: the main assaults on my mental health are job-related stress and anxiety about getting Dave and myself to the same geographic location on a permanent basis; these are both long-term issues that will take some time to address. But what I can do now is make the effort to cook and eat healthfully, be disciplined about getting enough rest, and exercise (e.g., running twice a week and meditation of some form). These don't directly address the stressors, but I hope they'll make me stronger and more flexible (mentally and physically) when I have to deal with them.
• Kindness: yeah, I'm pretty stressed out. But I have so much to be thankful for, and I can practice my thankfulness by being kind to others. I remember this little tiff I had with a woman in my choir back in 2005, when I was stressed out about applying for graduate schools. I was so sleepy during rehearsal, that I was reading a magazine when the sopranos were not actively rehearsing to stay awake. The woman behind me scolded me, which made me indignant. She emailed me later that night to apologize, saying that she had been out of line. I responded by explaining that I was sleep-deprived because I was going through a lot of stress, and she replied to say that she totally understood – her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's the previous year, and she had had to put her in a nursing home, and bring her father home to live with her – and that I could call her anytime I needed someone to talk to. Umm, yeah you win, lady! I should have been more gracious towards her in her outburst. I've been trying to remember that lesson ever since: you never know what's going on in the lives of people around you, and a small gesture of kindness may go a long way in someone else's life.

Just typing out these plans have made me feel a little better. My hope is that at the end of the next few months, though I'm unsure about where things will stand on various issues with my program, I'll be able to say that I was disciplined about my research goals, worked to stay sound in mind and body, and was kind to others (esp. Dave!).

research library

I love research libraries. I love the library here so much that I have been known to write sappy, overly emotional emails in the wee hours of the morning to generic accounts about how much I love what you do and thank you for making my life so much better every single day.

But not everyone feels that way, especially when they're working in the library. I was amused by these handwritten labels on the knob of a non-functioning radiator in a library carrel:

Amused, yes, and saddened too – for what (former) PhD student doesn't recognize these states of being?

tension

These days I'm feeling pulled in too many different directions. In each choice, both alternatives are desirable and plausible, and balance is elusive. This makes me very uncomfortable – I much prefer to evaluate the possibilities, select the best one, devise a plan of implementation, and then put it into action! I feel competent and effective, each step an imposition of my will on the world.

But now I feel paralyzed about major decisions involving career strategy and my personal life. I feel my lack of experience and wisdom so acutely. I've spent nearly my entire adulthood in school, which always provided me with an obvious step-by-step script to follow. But now I find myself in an unusual job – not only am I confused, but no one can advise me about how things "should" go or what the expectations for me are. My position is awkward because I am an assistant professor in one department, but I also direct a language program (LP) in a different location. I am to be evaluated in my performance at both aspects. Here are some areas in which I feel indecisive:

Conflict #1: What to do this fall?

• A. I should remain, or at least spend a significant amount of time, in NYC for my research time (Oct.-Dec.) in order to keep the ball rolling at the language program. When I'm physically away, important program priorities may stall, and as Director, I'm responsible for seeing them through. This will make the spring semester a lot easier to handle.

OR

• B. I should return to Michigan to live with my husband! I'm a newlywed, I'm miserable when we're apart, and this is an important opportunity to take advantage of. Also, as an assistant professor, it's imperative that I protect my research time in order to publish, publish, publish.

Conflict #2: Where to live?

• A. Because Dave is still seeking employment in the metropolitan area, I should avoid paying a broker's fee and signing a lease as long as possible. He could get a job in New Jersey or Connecticut or upper Manhattan, which would greatly affect where we live. By waiting to see what happens, I invest in the idea that we will be living together soon, a hope I must nurture to stay sane.

OR

• B. I should invest in a place and a neighborhood so that I can feel more settled and happy. I'm a nesting-type person, and my mental health will improve when I have a place that meets my needs, even if I find it problematic and expensive later to be locked into a location that turns out not to be suitable.

Conflict #3: Where should I spend my time at work in NYC? Nothing can replace the serendipitous interactions that arise from simply "being around."

• A. I should focus on putting in face time in my own department. This was the advice of a friend who just finished his first year on the tenure-track. These are the people who will mentor me towards tenure and vote on my tenure file, and this is where my primary appointment lies.

OR

• B. I should focus on putting in face time in the location of the LP, which is in a different borough from my department. This was the advice of the previous director of the program. A lack of personal connections at the location of the LP has been detrimental for the program, and one of my big priorities is raising our profile and emphasizing our benefit to the larger institution. 

 Advice? Obvious answers? If you've got 'em, I want to hear 'em!

spam for academics

I just received an unsolicited email from Prezi, the online presentation tool. The subject line blares:

K., are you still brainstorming on paper... offline... by yourself?

The answers? Yes...yes...YES! Seems that I truly belong to Prezi's target demographic – the lonely, technologically-averse, and isolated scholar. And yes, I do feel kind of insecure about it. Please, Prezi, show me a link, and I'll click it quick!