Sightseeing

I wore myself out today traipsing around Ottawa. It is a really good-looking city, and I really appreciated how the combination of the Rideau Canal and the river really makes for a lot of green spaces. With Gatineau (formerly Hull) right across the river, there are some great Quebecois influences, including some really good boulangeries in the Byward Market area.

The Parliament buildings are more impressive in person than on all those postcards, news clips, and other pictures I've seen over my life. I took advantage of being here in Ottawa to take a tour of the centre block. 

I found it quite impressive to see the House of Commons up close and personal. Of course there was nothing going on today, but seeing the chamber in person reminded me that all those images that you see on television or the internet can't substitute for actually being in those spaces.

There's really no substitute for being there yourself. 

The Peace Tower itself offers a pretty amazing view of the city and Gatineau across the river, including at least one set of locks in addition to the ones on the Rideau Canal. I was disappointed to see that the stairs were only considered an emergency exit. I think it would've been neat to climb the tower and see the bells up closer than the quick glimpse through the elevator window that you get on the way up.

But the thing that I was most looking forward to seeing was the Parliamentary library. The structure was originally designed based on the British library (obviously the old one, not the spankin' new one) in 1872 and it is the only part of the building that survived the fire of 1916 because the head librarian had insisted on metal doors being installed, which protected it when the rest of the structure went up.  Quite impressive.

I had seen the Library of Parliament on a list of top ten most beautiful libraries in the world, so when the tour guide confirmed we would be going to the library, I was tickled. 

Yes, I'm a geek.

I actually had one of the security guards remind me that I needed to stay with the tour group because I lingered just a bit too long at the end, reluctant to leave! But it is an absolutely gorgeous library. Of course someone in the group said it looked like a Harry Potter library, which at first I found annoying since the films were based on real libraries, but then I realized that perhaps that was indeed the only context that person had to compare this library to. Regardless, I'd love to wander it unimpeded, but the public has not access to the stacks of this library.  Too bad.

My feet are well worn after trucking from the university to the Hill, through the market and back down Sparks street.  But it was still a good day!

Take off

Just about to take off for Ottawa. I've never been there before, and I've never flown Westjet, so we'll have to see what all the fuss is about. A lot of friends swear by Westjet and swear at Air Can, so I'll be interested in seeing how different the experience might be. Personally, I'd rather fly Air Can than some of the US carriers - I've got an intense hate on for at least one of them - so I'm curious to see how much better Westjet might be!

Past and Future

I'm not thinking of the present right now, since that always seems to consist of dissertation editing. Actually, editing doesn't seem the right word, since it's basically a complete rewrite - at least for the first chapter and introduction, which are the two places where I'm focusing right now.

So I give you the past and the future instead, since they're far more interesting!

Past: I had a good, long weekend, with just the right balance of work and play.

• The new Star Trek movie was good. Better than I thought it would be. Given the number of things the movie had to accomplish: cater to existing fan base, attract new, younger fan base, provide back story for existing characters without irrevocably damaging continuity with the older selves of those characters and plots, I think it pulled it off fairly well. I've seen the criticisms and the praise, and must say that I fall mostly on the side of praise for the flick.... But then again, I've always been more of a fan of Star Trek than Star Wars, so I wanted it to be good.
• I think I've finally really accepted that we own this house we're living in. I've rented for so terribly long that when we moved in, I left things pretty much as they were. We tended to use existing holes for hanging pictures, and I realized the other day that there's a poster on the garage wall that I really don't like - I just never took it down after the previous owners left it behind. This weekend, I felt like I was really starting to accept that it is ours to do with as we please when I dug out a bush that I've never liked, even when we first viewed the place. It feels good to have the horrid little thing gone!
• Went for the first hike of the season. There was still a lot of snow, though it was mostly manageable. In fact, it wasn't the snow that was the problem, it was the run-off that made our trekking difficult. Despite the hike actually only being a short one, all three of us who went are still sore two days later! But it was nice to get out there.
• I finally got to go to dinner with my dear friend from when we lived here before. Both of us have pretty busy lives, but hers is one that I do not envy in the least given all that she does. All the more reason to admire her grace in managing it. I know I could not pull it off as well as she does. But it does mean we don't hang out near as often as either of us would like to. After several weeks of not seeing each other, and several false starts, we finally met for a long and refreshing dinner on Sunday night. Good friends, like family, are one of those things that make all the other stuff in a week worthwhile!
  

Future: this week is a fairly busy one... but in a good way.

• I need to go to the school to talk to the department chair about my brand spankin' new full-time position that will begin in the fall! I'm excited enough to have done a little dance for the benefit of my family when I told them I'd been offered the position at the end of last week. It is just a 10 month term, but it comes with more opportunities and responsibilities than I have had to this point, so that's terribly exciting. I need to meet with the department chair to talk about the details this week.
• I fly off to a conference down east this weekend, so I have to do a final run-through of the paper to make sure it flows properly as spoken word. The argument seems to have shaped up quite well, though I could do with three more minutes of time in order to make it. But overall, it's ready to go. I'm trying out an idea I want to introduce in the second chapter of the dissertation, so I'm really hoping I get some good feedback from the audience about it.
  
• After the conference, I'm heading down to meet with my committee members about revision plans, where to go from here, and now that I've got this new gig, tips about the job I'll be expected to undertake. Heading to my doctoral institution means I have a list of books and resources I want to access that I can't get at here (or not inexpensively), and a short list of red tape to work through, which always goes so much faster in person!
• I also will get to see some people who I haven't seen for over a year, and I'm really looking forward to hanging out with them! I just about talked another far-flung member of our graduate student group into returning at the same time, but she's swamped with work, and thinks it's prudent to get the work done instead. I can't argue with that logic, though I'll miss getting to see her too.
  
• I need to meet with my new boss at the e-learning company. The structure and focus of the organization have changed over the last month, and coupled with a new full-time position - even if it is temporary - will require some adjusting. I'd like to have an idea of what that would look like before I leave town for a week and a half.
  

So that's my life right now. In between the past and the future, I continue to revise the dissertation while trying to complete other writing projects that I've committed to and enjoy my life beyond work. So far, the rain (and snow!) this spring have made it easy to stay in and work...!

Wow, just wow

From one of my favorite diversions (The customer is) Not Always Right when I'm in the throes of hard revision.

I didn't come to college to learn anything!

RBOC: Spring version

I have a few blogs posts floating around my head, but instead of coherent posts, I will provide bulleted snippets of thoughts until they coalesce into something worthy of a single blog post.

• spent the last few days in the mountains, driving in and out for a faculty retreat, and it made me realize spring in the mountains is a very different creature from spring on the prairies
• heard a great presentation by a politician (I know! a politician who was interesting to listen to... rare bird!) on the connection between education and politics - it wasn't just about policy but about the philosophical connection between the two, which actually gave me some things to think about. This might be a future blog post if I can put my thoughts to paper (so to speak)
• youngest daughter's drama production last night was intelligent and fun - the students had actually written parts of the play, and frankly, their parts were the best ones!
• even though I have very clear ideas of how this dissertation draft needs to change before it gets resubmitted for additional revisions suggestions, putting those ideas into practice is proving even harder than I expected (and I had expected it to be hard!)
  
• I had a lot of great conversations at the faculty retreat - a couple of not so interesting ones as well, but mostly, really stimulating and interesting conversations! I'm really glad I made the hour and a half trek out to the site each of the last two days because it was worth it!

That's all I got now folks. Here's hoping I can pull together a better blog post over the next few days.

Milk... does a body good!

Reviews of milk. Not "Milk" but milk.

I especially like the poetic ones...

Well, that's over, whether for better or worse

So the interview went fine. There was a question from the HR rep that I hadn't anticipated, so I answered a variant, which unfortunately ended up being the answer that I should've given to the next question.

Dang.

And I of course thought of a wonderful, brilliant answer a half hour after walking out of the room.

Darn.

Oh well. The teaching demo went better than I thought from my end - I actually found it fairly easy to "teach" to people I knew had already mastered the material. I did discover that the examples I used were less-than-useful because they did pose a bit of a challenge to the "students". That could be a bad thing if it made them feel confused or frustrated by those examples. I think that could actually sink the interview.

The good news I learned after the interview was that they should have some part-time work for me in fall, which is good to hear because I didn't get anything in the first go-round of course assignments in April. So I will be working there in fall - the question is just whether it will be full-time (with all the other tasks/responsibilities that go with that) or adjuncting again.

The weirdest part of the whole thing is that I walked out of the interview over to the department office to mark a deferred exam from last term. Weird to interview and then be reminded that you already work for them at the same time!

More nervous than I have a right to be

On Friday I got a phone call for a job interview, and since then I've been trying to decide if I even mention it here. You see, I've got this fear that if I mention the interview, I'll jinx it, not get the job, and then feel like a big loser for not getting it.

But it's also been consuming much of my waking thoughts over the last several days. Perhaps just because something is consuming all my thoughts isn't enough reason to blog. But then again, blogging is a slightly narcissistic activity, so why isn't all-consuming-thought a good reason for a post?

Anyway, it's a one-year teaching job here in town. The thing that's freaking me out is the teaching demo. I have to prepare a 10-12 minute lesson on transitions for a first year writing class.

Sounds simple.

It is.

But I'm still a little weirded out by it. It's not like I'm nervous about the idea of teaching - I'm not. Nor is it that I don't know how to teach such a lesson - I do. I've actually planned out the lesson for within the allotted time. I'm just nervous about trying to do it in front of an audience who I KNOW aren't students. Particularly since it will be an interactive activity. I just know that the killer for the teaching demo will be if I allow myself to dwell on the fact that the "students" for this demo are the people judging whether I'm a good teacher or not!

I know students evaluate our classes, but they don't really know anything about pedagogy and, really, for all the groaning we as adjuncts might do about student evals, there isn't that much riding on them (or at least, not JUST on them).

But it's hard to teach to people who you know already know the material. Especially if you suspect they actually know the material BETTER than you do! I've done workplace training before where I've known some of the trainees already knew the material - it's an awkward experience at best.

I tell myself it doesn't matter if I don't get the job (though it would be nice). I tell myself that the interview and demo itself are great experience, since this certainly won't be the last time I do either.

But that doesn't make me any less nervous.

All I can do is keep practicing the demo and answers to sample questions. And try not too think about how much I really would like this job!

Poor confused bunnies

The rabbits that frequent our neighborhood are in the process of changing colour from white to brown. So they're sort of mottled right now.

They are starting to blend into the browns of not-yet-awakened spring vegetation.

But since most of our precipitation this month has been in the form of snow,* the poor bunnies must be awfully confused about what colour they need to be!

*the snow isn't terribly cold, and it doesn't really stay long on the ground, but seeing white flakes coming down day after day has sure made it seem like spring is far away!

Now it makes sense

I just figured out via an email exchange who it was who probably pushed for that very disappointing reversal of job market support last year.

It wasn't who I thought it would be.

Not that it makes much difference. What's done is done. But by the sounds of the exchange this week, it appears that I may face similar opposition this year.

I must tread carefully, even though part of me wants to yell in frustration. Instead, I must be deferential and meek. I must do nothing to antagonize.

And here I was just starting to finally feel confident about the project. Now to know there's still doubt about it, even after all the work I've done since last fall, is disheartening.

My first response was "I'll show you". Which is probably a good response.

But that little voice in the back of my head whispers, "but what if you can't?"

I'm trying to ignore it.

Anybody got a pair of ear plugs?

How I feel this morning

Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy announcement

So, the title of the final installment of the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy will the The World's End.

Much speculation is ensuing in the blogsphere about which genre Pegg and Wright will tackle next. Having tackled the zombie movie parody in Shaun of the Dead...









...and then the buddy cop movie in Hot Fuzz




Many are wondering what's next. My first thought was science fiction. With a title like The World's End, that would fit. But parodying science fiction can be a tricky thing. Remember Galaxy Quest?

At least it's not gone that far yet

I had a dream last night that I was at a conference flipping through the program when I came a across a whole section of full page colour ads from job hopefuls, advertising their specialties and how attractive they would be as faculty. In the dream I wondered how much those ads would cost and who I might know who could help with the design.

At least the job market in academia hasn't got THAT competitive... yet.

Zotero saves the day!

I downloaded zotero today - a Firefox extension that promises to help me organize my notes in exactly the ways I've been wanting to.

I've been searching for the last few months for some way to make my new Mac more useful to my academic work. Specifically, I was looking for a way to take notes like I do in Endnote on my PC. I really love my Endnote, but I started checking out sente for the Mac after a friend recommended it.

But ideally, I wanted the flexibility to be able to transfer my files from PC to Mac and vice versa. I won't be able to dump the PC for a while, since I have to interface so much with PC-related programs for my e-learning job. But I wanted to use my Mac for more than just writing. It's been great to use for the writing, and I love the versatility of the machine, but I wanted notetaking capability too.

I'm almost skeptical because zotero is looking like it's absolutely everthing I want. I can create libraries, conduct searches and enter notes like I can with Endnote. Although it's a browser application, you don't need to be connected to the internet to use the files, so even when I'm cheaping out on the $15/night that hotels charge for access (what is that about anyways?!), I can still use the application.

As well - and here's where I'm breathless in anticipation of the possibilities - it can run on both my Mac and PC because it's a browser application. Not only that, but if I download the beta version, it promises to sync each computer's content with the other! Sync it every time I open one or the other! So that I'll always have a complete library of resources, regardless of which computer I'm working on. No worrying about whether I've updated all the files and transferred them from one computer to another. How cool would that be!? Of course I have yet to download the beta version, but I'm already super-duper impressed with the standard version.

And the best part? Transferring all my Endnote library to zotero is just a matter of a couple of clicks.

I can see this product making my research much easier in the future... the only thing cooler than discovering it now would've been discovering it a year ago!

Repetition avoidance

You would think that the part of my elearning job that requires me to review the website material before releasing it to the client would be easy. After all, it involves clicking through all the components and then listening to whatever audio and/or video components are on the site to make sure they say what they're supposed to say.

The only problem is that at the end of the project, listening to those audio and video components AGAIN is about the LAST thing I want to do! At the end of the project I've already:

• read through the materials provided by the client and/or discussed the project content with them
  
• scripted the content for audio/video appropriate format/language
  
• been at the video shoot/audio recording, including all the re-takes/re-records
  
• (in some cases) been in the editing suite while the editor completes final edits of multimedia content
  
• listened to/watched all audio or video to ensure it was recorded correctly before sending it to the web developer
  

So the final quality assurance of the video and audio component will be at minimum, the sixth time I've heard the same material.  

Sometimes, it's just really hard to listen to it just ONE more time...!

email's great... email sucks

Two emails this morning have got me realizing how good it is for some things and how horrible for others.

The first is a complaint about grades. I began to compose an answer explaining why they student's grade kept going down from first draft to second to final (hint: no change/improvement!) but then realized, I'm not about to defend my grading criteria via email, so erased all of it and told the student to make an appointment. If he shows up, I'll talk.

The second is a series of emails from the web developer for the online work I do, asking for "descriptions" of each of the sections of a course we've developed. I've said in at least three emails that the title of each section is pretty descriptive of what's within it. Since the developer has all the titles, I figure it would be easy to replicate that in the description. But I still keep getting emails asking for the description of each section.

Finally, I spent a half hour taking the document that lists all the titles, and adding a description line. Each line looks something like this:

[title] "describes [title]"

Seriously.

Somehow I suspect walking down the hall to the developer's cubicle to explain this would've taken much less time (not to mention my frustration) than having to write out an entire page of titles with the word "describes" in front of them!

Email's great for some stuff - I love it and regularly communicate by it, even sending off long missives... after all, I organized a whole conference long distance via email! But there are limits...

Metadissertating: Comprehensives and Dissertations

In my continuing fascination with this whole dissertation writing process, I've been thinking about the PhD process in general as well. Although the dissertation has taken a long time to draft, it's been a valuable experience, which made me realize how frustrating some of the other parts of the whole process have been.

I'm specifically thinking of the comprehensive exams process. The way that my department has it structured, we have one year after coursework to write the comps. Of course before you can write the comps, you have to read all the things on your list. The thing that gets me about my department is that it also requires you to create the list before you can begin to read it.

When I was doing the comps, they weren't too stringent about the one year rule. They've gotten much more militant about keeping people to the limit lately , and I have to say, I'm just glad that I did my comps when I did, or I would've been screwed. It took me a year and a half before I finished writing mine, and I feel like I busted my ass to get them done in time.

I honestly don't think I could've come up with the reading lists for three areas and read everything on those lists in a year. I don't mean that I wasn't willing to do so, or thought it was too much work. Obviously, I undertook the work needed to complete those lists and read them all. But I cannot imagine how I could've done it in a year. I just can't imagine it.

I have done this whole PhD the hard way though. I came into the program thinking I would study one primary area and one secondary area. After the first year, I was told that neither area was feasible (even though on the books, both would've been). So I really had to kind of start all over again to figure out what area(s) I wanted to specialize in. So even by the end of my coursework, I had no idea what I really wanted to do.

I think if I had known from the start and been able to stick with my plan, perhaps the comprehensives wouldn't have been such a huge pile of work. I know some of my colleagues have started thinking about them in the second year of coursework and started working on their lists. I suppose that's the thing that a person would have to do in order to take the comps in a year. That, or designate one of your areas based on your Master's thesis (which is another thing I didn't do - I was a little disillusioned with it at the time).

I understand the rationale behind having students create their own list is to become 'experts' in a field - actually three fields - but to have to discover what makes one an expert by having to create those lists in the first place seems a trifle unfair. I do find myself wondering whether an informal network of existing lists will crop up in an effort by student to stick within the one year limitation. I know I've shared my lists with people who have asked. I hope others do too.

But what has become even more apparent to me since then is how much more valuable the dissertation has been to creating expertise than the comps ever were. The comps were great because I've now read a whole bunch of stuff. But I don't feel they gave me an expertise in any of it. That came with the dissertation.

The dissertation (understandably) has forced me to become an expert in the topic. Which of course means I've read a lot of books. And I would say that 80% of those books were not in my comprehensives lists (and 95% of the important ones were not). So in essence, the dissertation reading was like it's own kind of comprehensive reading list.

But just as much as the dissertation had me reading things in a particular area, it also taught me HOW to write up all that work. There's a monumental difference between writing a series of seminar papers, and writing the dissertation. I would suspect that even for people who strung together seminar papers for their dissertation, that a considerable amount of effort went into making it all hang together. That's the tricky part - to see the whole in its entirety, not just the little snippets of scholarship that the seminar paper, article, or (even shorter) conference paper require.

What I suppose I'm saying is that if I was asked to design a PhD program, I would change the way the comprehensive exams and the dissertation were structured so that the comprehensives were less critical and the dissertation more so. Perhaps my experience is unusual and others have felt the comprehensives to be more - or as - useful as the dissertation. But for me, they're just a huge storehouse of work I've read. They help me understand other people's projects far more than they helped me understand my own. Until I'm part of that big academic party that tt-faculty represent, I don't know how much good that big storehouse actually is...

Post conference downer

There's something extremely exciting and satisfying about conferences that seems to evaporate when you return to everyday life.

A week of warm weather, stimulating conversation, fabulous seafood and lots of new ideas was replaced this morning with an early commute, teaching, a huge stack of marking, snow (!), and a seemingly endless list of unattended emails.

Welcome back to reality!

Happy blogversary!

Six years of blogging. That's actually quite a long time when you think about it. And yet, I'm still working on the degree that I was when I started, so maybe it's not so long... !

I really hope I finish it before the next blogversary!

There have been several times that I've thought about abandoning the blog over those years, but I keep coming back to it, even after extended absences. I haven't quite figured out why. I suspect a large part of it is because I know there are readers who follow even when they don't comment, and I guess I want to stay in touch with the people I know and care about. Sometimes it's just a great place to try out an idea. To those of you who have suffered through those - kudos to you!

I have found the occasional germ of a blog post emerging in my work either for conferences or for the dissertation. I also think that combined with the non-academic clients I write for in the elearning job, the blog has helped me better understand the different kinds of writing that different audiences require. Being more aware of audience has translated back to the dissertation as well, so that's a benefit of the blog.

But mostly it's my readers. Thanks for hanging in there through the droughts and the dullness to keep coming back for more. You're the primary reason why this blog exists, and I thank you!

Doing my work for me

Once I crawled out from the mountain of grading and online work this last week, I started fretting about the conference paper I'm to deliver next week.

The argument in the paper has to be supported by sufficient plot description so that the argument makes sense, but because part of the argument about Fido is that the visual effects of the film create the actual argument, it also requires a lot of scene description.

Anyone who has written a conference paper knows how hard it is to make an argument in twenty minutes. It's even harder when you have to spend some of that time describing the source on which the argument is based.

So in my frustration with trying to put this together, I distracted myself by reading through the conference program online.

The meet and greet for the area that is sponsoring my panel always shows a movie on the first night.

Guess which movie they're showing this year?

Awesome!