Ah, the end of the week. Time to finish up the tasks for the week. Start getting stuff ready for the new week. Make sure teaching assignments are noted.

Will talk to my one of my advisees this afternoon. This is the student of mine who is having an awful problems passing exams. He has had to retake almost all the exams at least twice and he still goes on. I am afraid that I think the program should have dropped him but they find an excuse to keep him on.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from one of the instructors in the course I direct. They were complaining that the microphone was still not working. When it was mentioned that this was the first time mention was made that the microphone was not working the question immediately came up why didn't the person say something the first time they found it was not working rather than assuming someone else would magically know about it and take care of it.

The other amazing thing is that an instructor requested that someone be available to show slides for their talk. This raises several questions - the major one when is the last time the person modified their talk? It is actually quite difficult to find someone who can make slides for classes - everyone uses the computer.

One of the harder aspects of the nature of the research I am carrying out now is the length of time between the initiation of an experiment and the results. This is not all that bad when you know an approach is working and all you are doing is repeating experiments or just varying the conditions but the same techniques are involved. But when you are working out the bugs in a technique you have to wait until you have the results before you begin the next experiment so you can determine what conditions you have to vary next. That is the stage I am in now. With committees and teaching it is even harder.

Had a complaint from a student about my last exam. Basically that their performance was poor yet they have been doing so well up to this point so my exam must be bad. I will admit my exam questions are hard. I tell the students that a hard exam is really in their best interest. If they are a good student then they will do well and be differentiated from the poorer students. If they have been doing poorly a hard exam is the only way they can pull their grade up. If the exam were easy everyone will do well and they would remain at the bottom. The students never understand this.

Friday's seminar was one I took for the Department. I showed the flag, filled up the audience, etc. I really did not understand much of it. The speaker was good it was just the topic outside my interest by a mile and presented a very mathematical approach. In high school I thought I was really hot stuff in math because I could do algebra so well. When I got to college and took calculus (3 semesters because of my major) I really struggled. I still break out in a cold sweat when I see differential equations. From the title I knew this would happen but as a faculty member I feel it is important to be as seminars both to support the faculty who invited the person (nothing is worse than a small audience) and show the graduate students that the faculty do come to the seminars so they should also.

Yesterdays lecture was for a seminar series for the vet postdocs. The guy who was in charge of the series reminded me that I had been giving a lecture in this series on molecular biology for 16 years or so. I was amazed it had been that long.

Today is a memorial symposium for a colleague who died quite young. That is always shocking to me and forces me to focus on doing the things I want while I can. That includes both work and outside of work. A few years ago I had a close friend and colleague who was my age die suddenly - no warning. He had been looking forward to all the things he was going to be able to do as other aspects of his life were finally being handled. Then poof. One of his mantras had always been what are you waiting for when I would dither over some issue (usually the spending of money in my case).

Lecture day today. Yesterday I decided a slide was needed to illustrate a point. Went to the net found a site which had a picture of just what I wanted grabbed it and put in the new slide. It is so wonderful being able to make changes up to the end.

Got a request from a former student for a recommendation for an award. The only problem is the letter is required tomorrow. I will do it - partly because I know the student only recently learned of the potential to apply for it. I hate having to do these things at the last minute.

What to do? Faced with a student (considered to be a very good one) who has to write a paper to proceed in the program. The first iteration was not good. Several on the committee gave suggestions and the person was to redo the paper. It came back only marginally improved. Rather than rewrite it the person took the changes as being editorial in nature rather than substantive. Another person and I went over it again emphasizing to the person how it failed to meet our expectations and they were to redo it. Now got another version which again is basically only a minor improvement over the last version. This person has to pass this in order to proceed with the program. If they were to fail this they would be out. I do not know if I can hold my nose and pass the person or what.

Another meeting today. Actually more like a symposium. I will pick and choose which sessions to attend and work from my office inbetween.

Got some paper forms I had to fill out. Do realize how hard it is to find a typewriter now?
We do have one in the front office but I do not feel like working on personal material in front of everyone. Decided to scan them and fill them in with my computer in Photoshop. Was doing it in Word but the spacing was harder to get right.

For all the complaining I do I should point out that I really enjoy what I do and look forward to each Monday! It is the start of a new week and new hope that I have figured things out. This week will be an office week as I again have meetings and am working on this lecture.

Lecturing has really changed. Not that long ago the debate was over how many slides to use and how often to go to the blackboard. I hated slides. It was a pain to get them made and then I would find a mistake and have to get them reshot or go with one I knew had an error. Then the next year I would have to sort through them all and figure out what I had and what I needed. Now we have PowerPoint. I can make all the changes I want and tweak slides until the minute I walk into class. I find that it really helps me get organized. I find that it is much easier for me to get a good flow to the lecture as I can move things around to fit. Anything that makes me more efficient is quite welcome.

I am a creature of routine. I learned a long time ago this made me more efficient. Rather than waste time flitting from one task to another I have certain routines. Fridays is Current Contents day. For those who do not know this is a weekly listing of the table of contents of journals. It saves time from having to leaf through the individual journals or going online and looking at them. I began with the print version while an undergraduate and have been making this a weekly ritual ever since. Now I read Current Contents on the computer. The other Friday task is to finish up all the things from the week that have been piling up.

Today we have a seminar. I try to go to all those in our department even when the topic is not in my area. I think this supports the department and shows the speaker there is an audience. Good pr for the department. As long as the speaker sticks to the hour format at worst I have only wasted 1 hour and even then if the seminar is really bad I can just think about other things.

At my meeting yesterday another of the things that annoy me happened. A member who had missed the meeting where we had discussed an issue brought it up again and proceeded to carry on a 30 minute monologue covering the very issues we had already discussed. If you are going to miss a meeting why do you think your opinions are so important that everyone must hear them at the next meeting without knowing that the same conclusion and decisions were already made.

Was supposed to have a meeting with a student to help her with the material I had covered in my lectures. She did not show and did not let me know she was not going to make it! Received an e-mail that she had forgotten! Must say I am not happy that I blew an hour because of that but did schedule her some time today.

Today another 2 meetings. At least this one has a defined time frame and actually makes policy decisions. I have less of a problem when a committee actually has a role - the defined time limits the agony since you know no matter what you will be done at a certain point.

Finished the 3 grant reviews. It is something that as part of the academic life we take on extra work (reviewing grants, reviewing papers, etc.) for no compensation. The whole system is based upon such volunteer efforts. Most of the people take it quite seriously. Especially with grants. You are deciding who will have the money to do the work and who will not. There are only a limited amount of funds. An awesome responsibility.

One of the aspects of the academic life I was unaware of as a student was the "meeting." It is amazing how these things eat up time - often way more than they have to. If you ever want to be disillusioned about professors go to a meeting! It seems some attendees at a meeting must show there dominance by taking over the discussion and going on and on only to reach the same conclusion that was there 20 minutes ago.

Speaking of meetings today I do not have any formal ones! Only 2 more grant reviews to finish, talk to my tech about the results of her most recent experiment, figure out why my experiment did not give me what I expected, and work on my new lecture.

Beginning

Well, this is my first post.

As an academic people have all kinds of false ideas of what we do. People think we sit around most of the day. At least in my case that is far from true. I would love to be able to spend more time in the lab working but take today:

8 am class
9 am review applicants
10 am graduate committee meeting
4 pm meet with student

Somewhere in this time I have to finish an experiment, finish the reviews of 3 grants, read four journals, talk to my tech, make sure our new incubator gets set up, talk the Department Head to tell him what went on at the meeting where I subbed for him.