Karen's Chronicles

The office quest

As Brian and I end our second week of official professordom, I thought I would comment on how we have been finding our feet -- or not. I'm not sure what we expected, some kind of grand initiation ceremony where they showed us where the secret faculty lounge is hidden perhaps. But nothing of the kind. We weren't really shown anything, it has been a grand exercise in figuring out what we need to ask for. For me this has been more obvious than for Brian, mostly because I went from being a grad student straight to faculty, and (unbeknownst to most) from one department to another.

Teaching has brought many of these things to the surface. For example, when requesting copies of my syllabus, it became clear that I would need copy codes. When moving my class to a conference room it became clear that I should have a key to the conference and mail rooms. When the new chair was announced and I was not included on the email, it became clear that I would need to request that I be put on the AE email list.

And then there is the issue of the office.

Space in universities is king. You have to plot and scheme for years it seems to get and maintain space. The only space you are ever "given" is your office space, but here again this is proving elusive. I am typing to you from the same place I typed my thesis -- my student cube. I will get my office once the grand domino of musical offices is complete. I am second in a chain which is about 5 links long and growing daily. Right now the first link in the chain has yet to fall because we are waiting for carpet to be replaced...

I would feel bad, except Brian is in the same boat. His office also isn't ready. He is waiting on furniture, whereas I am waiting on carpet. I find this amusing and frustrating at the same time. Sigh. Everyone pray for efficient carpet replacement services.

Professoral Acts

Everyone has been asking me about my first week as a prof. The standard questions, about teaching, research etc. Teaching is going well. Research is not yet running smoothly, but I have high hopes.

Today though, I finally felt like a professor. I wasn't expecting to, as I walked down the hall to the bathroom. But about 100 feet from the turn from one building to the other (my building is actually 2 shaped like an L) I heard loud, unconstrained, grieving. This is not your standard crying. It is unmistakable (to an American, because these things are probably cultural) grieving. I had a bad feeling that when I turned the corner I would find someone who had just been told a loved one had died. I was not wrong. I was rather worried though that it was going to have been a parent of the student I was about to discover. Luckily it was not. However the death was a suicide and the raw emotions of sock and guilt were plain.

As she dialed her father and sobbed uncontrollably into the phone, I had flashbacks into a similar call I made after splitting my chin open not more than 300 yards away. I grabbed the phone away from her and promptly told the father that my name and that I was a professor in the xx department, that, most importantly, his daughter was perfectly fine (at least physically), and that I was taking her to the counseling center and someone needed to come pick her up (if at all possible). I explained the broad outlines of the problem, hung up and walked the student to the counseling center. I may have been the only one in the building (with authority) who knew where it was. And in this one act, which will never make it onto my CV, I felt like a professor for the first time.

GA Ctitizen

So today I went down to the DMV, which in Georgia is the department of drivers services (or something like that), and traded in my VA license for a GA one. I registered to vote, and will most likely be called up to Jury duty next week. Actually a fairly painless process. 1 hour and $36 later I had my shiny new GA drivers license which is good for 10 years. They actually threw in 3 months for free and made it expire on my birthday.

First Day

Well my first day as a professor wasn't very eventful. I teach Tuesday/Thursday so today was quiet. I don't have a new office so I'm still in the same seat I was in last week. Feels fairly the same, just more stress. I got lots of little pressing things done, but not very important things. Sigh. Will try to get more motivated to do "important" things tomorrow.

Faculty Orientation and FERPA

Yesterday was Day 1 of a 2.5 day faculty orientation. I went to help fill in the gaps in my knowledge and to learn the official Tech policies on teaching, grading, etc. It was pretty good except for what was probably the most important presentation of the day on FERPA. FERPA is the law that establishes privacy rights for your grades at any institution that receives funds from the DOEd. My employer is one of these schools. The presentation consisted of Dos and Don'ts. One of the Don'ts was "Keep grades on your laptop or desktop computer" Right... So of course a group of highly intelligent, yet litigation shy new faculty pounced on the presenter over this topic. "So are you telling us that we cannot keep grades electronically?" "What is a reasonable level of protection to use when keeping grades electronically" to the general feeling of "what the hell are we supposed to do, chisel them in stone with roman numerals?"

There was really no adequate answer... The only plausible answer seemed to be to use the online course system which is on "secure" servers. Mostly this is to shift all blame from any security breach to the university and away from us individually.

Personally I think FERPA has gone too far. I cannot even hand any graded assignment back in class by passing the papers around because it violates someone's right to privacy. I think that if you are taking a class you abandon your right to absolute privacy. If some of your classmates know what you get on your HW, so what. It is at most 25% of your grade. I can understand tests and exams, but HW? Give me a break... I'm also going to have to make a policy that all assignments not claimed in class will have to be claimed during office hours only because a box in the hall is also verboten.

More fun today.

Defense & Moving In

Last week was a blur. I defended my thesis on Tuesday and got 4/5 signatures. I need one more, but he was teleconing in from the Cayman Island (where his wife lives) and so will have to track him down this week. It all went well and now I just have to motivate make the minor changes they suggested... Lack of motivation is high.

Then on Wednesday the packers came. They came 40 minutes and caught us off guard. They were quick and were out the door by 2pm. The original plan had been to pack and load the truck in a single day (which would have been fairly straight forward) but the plan changed and they didn't load until Thursday. My parents arrived on Wednesday night and were a great help unpacking all of the boxes starting Thursday evening when everything finally made it into the house. Friday/Saturday/Sunday were all spent in a blur of unpacking and painting.

We painted the dining room a darker red, which I really like. I wanted to paint the back (blue) bedroom a bright green. Unfortunately I wasn't so good with the paint samples and the firs color I chose looked essentially neon on the walls. So then we tried again with a darker color. It still seems a little bright, but it needs a second coat which we ran out of time to do. So it will go on the ever expanding project list. I'll post more photos soon. Other project included installing blinds in the master bedroom. Why is it that houses all seem to be sold without blinds in the master bedroom? Running new cable and phone lines. Installing toilet paper holders. Re-lighting the pilot light to the water heater, etc. I'm sure Becca will chime in here any moment.

Back from Europe

We arrived back from Rome on Tuesday evening. We miraculously managed to get 4 bottles of wine, one bottle of balsamic vinegar, and one bottle of olive oil back to the US in our checked luggage without breaking the glass bottles. Tuesday night and yesterday were a blur of catching up on email, scrambling to assemble down payment money, fighting with the post office and buying groceries. We close on the house today and I have feelings which are yo-yoing between excitement, exhaustion and fear. Hopefully the excitement will win out.

In a strange twist of GA law, though we won't take possession of our house until Sunday at 3pm. According to our realtor, this is normal... Or at least normal for Georgia. I'll send out our new address and contact information in an email later. For the first time in years I had to apply for and pay for a parking permit... Sigh.

In other news I'm trying to convince myself to work on my defense presentation. Right now I just have the Becca slide, "I'm done now" Hard to imagine what I've been working towards for so long is almost over -- it just feels odd.

Ready to Go

Well my thesis is mostly complete -- just waiting to talk with my adviser one more time about it. Then it will be packaged up and emailed out to the committee and I don't have to think about it for two weeks.

We are still in the middle of packing. I've got a new, larger, backpack and am getting used to how to pack things into it. Probably still need to gather a few things tomorrow morning, but our trip is so close I'm getting really excited. I think Brian however is a Sarah like traveler. I think he gets more nervous the closer the trip gets.

It is really storming here, so I'm glad we are heading out tomorrow. I'm honestly not sure if we'd get out tonight or not. We do need the rain though, so this past week (full of rain) has been great.

Feeling Like An Adult

Well, the owners accepted our offer after an exchange of offer and counter offer. We are happy that we got a good deal. So now it is down to the nitty gritty and less glamorous side of house buying. Last night and early this morning Brian and I spent out time filling out forms and trying to get all of our financial documents in order. Then I spent over an hour on the phone arranging home owner's insurance, determining that we don't need flood insurance and asking after life insurance. In the middle of this conversation, the "wow, I'm an adult" feeling hit me.

The thesis is coming together slowly...

House

We put an offer in on a house this morning.

Waiting to hear back + trying to work on thesis => distracted...

Just need to push through a few more sections...

Here are some pictures we took, mostly for our own memory. Thus they often focus on random things that we found good, odd, or in need of repair. I'll post more later if we get the house.

Move pictures

Move Recap

Yes, we made it. We pulled in ATL about 12pm EST. We unhitched the car and the tow dolly (all while being supervised by a youth who was previously walking around.) Then it was off to Tech to test the perception of the campus police department. We wanted to see that if someone pulled a large, brightly colored truck into the alley by the AE building and began unloading things at 1am if anyone would notice, let alone try to stop us. The PD either failed or passed depending on how you look at it. Either way we unloaded all of my books and papers without anyone saying a word to us and without getting mugged.

Saturday dawned bright and sunny, yet remarkably cool. I've never had such good weather for a move, and may never have it again. The moving guys showed up at around 10, which was later that I would have liked. However, years of moving had taught me that "first thing" in the morning equals around 10 in mover speak. They moved quickly though and we were out of the apartment by 1:20. Unfortunately we missed our check out time so had to wait until 2 for the lady to be free again. Then it was off to pick up the tow dolly for the car. We left the twin cities around 3pm, heading due east. We stopped that night in Bloomington, IL where we arrived at arrived at around 12:30. We both fell into bed and didn't move until 7 the next morning. Then it was downstairs to fight our free breakfast with a large group of Hispanic Jehovah's witnesses. We were on the road by 8, and pulled into the Clarksville, TN U*haul at around 3:40pm. It took us a while to get our truck pulled up to where it needed to be to load up the last of Steven's stuff. We were ready to go by around 4:10 but it took us another 30 minutes to get out of the place because the on attendant was swamped. After a quick, but lovely dinner at the red*lobster across the way we were off again.

Trying to find a place to eat dinner when you are in a 16' truck towing a car behind you is no easy feat. You cannot back up and you take up about 7 car spaces... We luckily managed to never have to remove the tow dolly to get ourselves unstuck. The closest we came, we were saved by a KOA sign which assured me that down the road a ways would surely be a spot big enough to turn an RV.

We slept in this morning and I am now at work setting up my work area so that I can finish my thesis over the next two weeks.

Fire

So last night as we were trying to get a good night's sleep before leaving the fire alarm went off. I was completely out of it and the alarm didn't even register until Brian got up. Then of course the sound was so piercing and deafening that we got dressed, put on shoes grabbed purses and laptop bags and walked out the door and outside. I was angry thinking it was another false alarm. Not to be.

Some sort of real fire down in the garage. We were outside for about an hour while all of the greater MPS fire departments arrived. We were allowed to go back, but not into the garage around 2am. So I still have to go see if the silver car is OK.

As we were standing outside watching men with oxygen and large axes swarm near the truck (we had parked it as far away from the building as possible, so it was near the fire trucks), Brian commented, "Good thing we got the truck damage insurance."

The move back South

The stuff is off the walls and off the refrigerator -- must be moving time. Tomorrow the movers come to pack me out. Brian and I will reverse our journey through Illinois back to Atlanta. Stay tuned for updates.

Towing and Power

Last night was a rather eventful night. I was woken up numerous times by seemingly random events. The first was a series of shouts emanating from what turned out to be my next door neighbor's balcony. Now this is strange in of itself in that I've never seen this person, let alone heard them shouting. The shouts were mostly single words which took me quite a while to work out what was going on until he yelled "stand in front of the truck" Luckily this finally resolved itself with the car in question being towed. Then sometime later the power went out. Normally this should pass unnoticed, but no some piece of random electronics in my apartment let out a soul piercing screech enough to wake me up. Then when the power came back on -- all of the air conditioning units in the entire place came alive waking me up yet again.