A Capitalist Brew

I feel like I should be posting something here, but I just don’t feel like I have the mental or emotional strength to come up with anything witty or worthwhile.  I have a couple of ideas rolling around in my head, but I just can’t sit down and write the words lately.  At home I am struggling to keep things organized and functional, and yesterday I had a rough day with Luke.  He is teething and also had a fairly high fever that was making him simply miserable.  That meant I spent the day holding and trying to keep him chilled out.  So, I am starting this week already feeling run down and wondering how I am going to make it to the next weekend.  Also, I have a lot of work to be doing: lesson plans, readings I couldn’t care less about for Newbie Professor’s class, figuring out and getting ready to teach ARGUS software next week to Z’s class, research to do, and a paper to get ready to submit to a conference later this week. And maybe I can make some headway on longer term projects when I get back from the spring break trip to the snowy North.  Blech.  And why can’t I get a latte in this town at 8 pm?  Remember the Gilmore Girls episode where Logan hires a coffee cart to follow Rory around Yale?  He needs to send one this way.

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This was one of those weeks that you are really happy to have past you.  Today we did not have a department seminar, so I got to come home and play with the kids and take them to the park.  I finished grading exams (6 A’s, 12 B’s, 6 C’s, and 12 D and below).  Overall, I am content with the distribution.  The people who came to class and worked hard got A’s, the people who came to class and mostly followed got B’s, the people who need to improve or show up more often got C’s, and the people who think they can learn this on their own or don’t care at all got what they deserved.  I intend to spend the rest of the evening working on next week’s lesson plans and enjoying some indulgent television.  Tomorrow I am taking Brooke to her first friend’s birthday party, so it should be fun and exciting for both of us.

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I have a desk calendar at the office entitled “Latin for the Illiterati”, which I love because it reminds me of my high school days studying Latin and visiting Italy. Each day has a little Latin phrase, and yesterday’s phrase was “miserere nobis” (translation: have mercy on us). I thought this was a particularly accurate phrase to describe the day for several reasons. One, I gave my first exam in my 436 class, and I am thinking that they were all muttering some form of this phrase under their breath. Second, my day was not much better. It started with Luke waking me up crying at 4:30 in the morning due to teething. After being up and down with him, he finally got settled and went back to sleep just as I had to get in the shower and start getting ready for the day. The administering of the exam was fine, but then I literally had to rip the paper out from one guy and deal with the needs of several students registered with the Office of Disability Services. I didn’t have much time to look over my presentation for seminar in the afternoon, and when I went home for lunch found myself collapsed on the kitchen floor from exhaustion and sore throat. Take a mental picture of me sprawled face-down on the kitchen floor and then transplant me into a seminar setting an hour later. I think you can imagine how not well the class went. I guess the only moment of mercy was that Newbie professor was once again disappointed with everyone and not just me. I don’t even want to delve any further into that topic.

Today I just decided to stay home from school. I only had scheduled office hours, and it is not like anyone is going to show up the day after an exam when they didn’t come before the exam. I feel much better for having a low key day. I went to the Christian bookstore where an overly friendly clerk wanted to hug everyone in the line paying for books.  I played outside with Brooke blowing bubbles.  I crawled around imitating babbles with Luke and watching him laugh.  I cried my eyes out watching Grey’s Anatomy (this happens every week).  I cried about how beautiful Patrick Dempsey is.  I felt renewed and restored…until Luke started screaming about his teeth in the middle of the night.  Oh well, back to reality.

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What is my favorite time of day?  Bedtime!  I love when it is my kids’ bedtime!  No, it is not because they drive me crazy and I can’t wait to get rid of them for the night (well, on some days I feel that way).  I just really love our bedtime rituals.  Luke is too young to have much of a ritual, but I love being in the rocker all alone with him feeding him a bedtime bottle.  The rest of the world is quiet, and it is just the two of us looking at each other with droopy eyes.  I savor these precious, quiet moments with him as he will soon outgrow this time and be a baby no more.

I also love my bedtime ritual with Brooke.  I climb up into her bed with her, and we snuggle under the covers reading books by the moon light (she has a wall lamp by the bed that looks like a moon).  Then we have to make the Groovy Girls talk to one another before they go to bed.  Next Brooke will ask for a “little bit water”.  After she gets the water, we turn the lights off and she snuggles down under the covers with a stuffed friend of her choice.  She tells me that she had a fun day with me and asks me to talk to her about Jesus and God.  We hug, kiss, and say goodnight.  I always leave her room with a smiling heart and thanking God for my two little blessings.

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Today I got word that my paper and all the necessary paperwork have been submitted for my comprehensive exam research paper.  The paperwork involved a memo from Z that was like a referee report and my response to his criticisms.  Now that it is all accepted, the only thing left is to present the paper to the faculty.  I have no idea when this might take place, but it is the last requirement to fulfill.  In the meantime, we are onto the next steps towards defending my dissertation proposal (hopefully in May).

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As a lowly doctoral student, I am not granted the luxury of my own office. I have my own desk and computer in a room with seven other economics and finance doctoral students. It has its good and bad points. We are not completely isolated, and chances are that you will gain some knowledge about the department, professors, and classes from your fellow students. If you are lucky, you will make some friends (hopefully they don’t take off to Duluth after your first year). At least you will get to know some future colleagues and will have people who are unlikely to allow you to pry open the window and jump when you get frustrated with classes or research (unless you have annoyed them, in which case they may look the other way).

The problem is that in these tight quarters where many people spend so much time, some people forget about boundaries and common courtesies.  For instance, I do not mind if people use my desk, computer (it is the school’s, not my laptop), or chair while I am not in the office.  I do mind if you don’t leave the desk as it was when you got there.  I do mind if you treat it like your own.  I get tired of coming in and plopping down in my chair only to find that the height and back have been re-adjusted.  I get tired of coming in and finding someone else’s junk all over my desk.  We are not just talking about papers or books.  We are talking bags, sweaters, empty food containers, coupons, hairbrushes, dental floss, and toothbrush.  Eww!

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While my family and most of my friends are getting lots of snow, we are under tornado warning watching tornadoes south and north of town right now.

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I can now fully comprehend the necessity for the rule in the syllabus that states “there are no makeup exams”. This semester I copied into the syllabus that there are no makeup exams and you will have the option to take a comprehensive final exam if you miss one of the in-class exams. Z had it in his syllabus, and I figured I would stick by the same policy. Well, it is a good idea! I have already had 3 students approach me about taking an exam at a different time, and the exam is still over a week away. I am sure there will be more. Plus, I only have 46 students in class. What would you do if you didn’t have that rule in a large lecture setting? Insanity and chaos would reign!

Luckily, I can point to the syllabus, and just say no. (The obvious exceptions to this rule are the students registered with the Office of Disability Services who need more time to take the exam.) I did offer to move the exam from Wednesday to Friday during class this past week, but nobody spoke up and said they were interested. So, I will just continue to enforce the syllabus. Especially for the MBA student who wanted to reschedule because he had too many other exams that week. Yea, tell me how that is my problem. Sometimes when you are a manager you have a lot of deadlines in the same week. Such is life. I may offer you a coffee if you stop by my office, but you are not getting a makeup exam.

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Teaching my class this semester has been an interesting challenge.  All the preparations that go into teaching a class for the first time are stressful under the best of circumstances.  I think it is also hard when you don’t have Ph.D. after your name and the automatic authority that the student associate with those letters.  It is harder when you are not even ABD yet but are still the instructor in a 400 level course with a extra MBA student thrown in the mix.  To make matters worse, a large portion of my class is taking the course for the second time.  They did not pass in the fall with Z as their instructor.  Those are actually the ones that make me the most uncomfortable.  Z is obviously very intelligent and experienced, and well, I am not yet.  I imagine my teaching style is fairly different from his, and I constantly worry about how these students are comparing me with him.  So, I was happy when earlier this week one of the students told me that I teach very differently but that I am really doing a great job conveying the concepts and information to them.  He said I am doing a good job at explaining the material and making it much more understandable.  I don’t know if there is a correlation with the fact that they are actually paying more attention and trying harder to pass this semester, but it did make me feel good about my performance thus far and took the pressure off just a little bit.

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Went to run in my new pink camo skirt today, and it was great!  First, it was great to finally get back to the gym.  Second, the skirt is awesome.  It looks so much cuter than shorts…legs look very cute.  There are no issues with shorts bunching in the thighs (not that this was a major problem before…only with certain pairs of shorts), the skirt is cool and breezy, and the fit is perfect.  I am so happy with it and suggest that all my running girlfriends invest in one of these skirts.  Scott also thinks I look cute wearing the skirt, so I am trying to convince him that I need another.

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