What Has Been Up
I apologize for being away for a while. A number of things have kept me from writing here. I do REGRET not writing for this time. Here is a summary:
- A major factor was related to the research talks I had been working with my researchers for their talk at the conference that occurred. It was, truthfully, a fairly "all consuming" activity with my having a quite large cadre of researchers at the moment. Thankfully, all SIX talks went very well and it was a great experience for them. But, I had shunted so much of my time the weeks prior to the conference towards helping them, that I fell behind in a whole helluva lot of grading.
- As a result, I did not get to simply "relax" at the conclusion of the conference, but really needed to jump back into lots of fussy grading (especially of my ~200+ students various writing assignments).
- Lent.... DECISIONS (which I will write about later).... and also considerably more activity that I needed to engage in both during Masses but broadly at our new parish outside of Mass as well.
- Medical challenges related to my MIL, my SIL, and my wife.... NONE WERE SERIOUS (thank God), but they each needed time.
- Medical duties related to our puppy (silly, I know.. she is now 13, but I think of her as a puppy still). I am now giving her supplements of glucosamine chondroitin to help keep her joints as strong as possible, as recommended by our veterinarian for her breed at her age. But, it was a bit of a task as the veterinarian only had supplements in the form of tablets. And, our pup is not a good girl in terms of taking pills, even if hidden in a hotdog or peanut butter..... she easily finds the tablet and leaves it behind. She is also rather new-food averse so she is somewhat guarded about foods that are not her normal dog food. So, I had to search for an appropriate liquid variant, and had to experiment to find a way to get this liquid into her normal food in a way that she would not become food averse to because of the odor change. I have developed a technique of coating her kibble in this liquid in a way that it gets absorbed, but at the same time does not change the normal odor appreciably and she willingly gobbles it down. It has been only around 10 days thus far, so it may be my imagination, but she seems more limber already.
By the way:
- Running has continued, unabated. It helps me to ameliorate stress and anxiety. I have worked to reshape my mindset about running to be a "joy" in that I can do it, compared to the "task" to just get it done because I should do it (which has been my mindset for probably the last three months).
- My weight has remained stable at my preferred "dead center" BMI. I seem to have turned that around successfully, and I am feeling relief being back into the more simple maintaining of my BMI.
- As you may already anticipate, pipes and pipe tobaccos are still ALWAYS in and on my mind. I think that I have finally, somewhat grudgingly accepted that this is likely immutable for me, no matter how I did not think this would be so.
5 Comments:
It's so good to hear from you, Professor! I'm sure I wasn't the only reader here who was worrying about your long absence, especially after your expressed desire to post more frequently. I'll share a few random thoughts spurred by your catch-up post:
Grading: Can you delegate any/more of that to responsible graduate students, even if all they do is a "first pass" that will simplify your later finalizing of grades?
Aging puppy: What a nicely creative solution to getting her medicated properly!
"Grudging acceptance" that your bond with your pipes is immutable: Why "grudging"? Your circumstance is not the same as a young person today. You came of age at a time and in a manner that your pipes are an integral part of your identity in a way that used to be widely accepted and that is still a potential source of joy if you could/would accept it as such. Why begrudge yourself of that?
Lent: Will be looking forward to hearing about your decisions, and about their salutary effect on your Lenten observance this year.
It's good to see you back, Professor!
It’s odd, but I tend not to notice that people have been gone until they return. I think I would eventually notice.
I am thinking that what you call grading, I usually called marking, but I certainly have used grading. When I watch British telly, I see that they call studying (for a test) revising. And math is maths.
I noticed but figured you were extremely busy--which you were! I'm glad you are switching your mindset on the running; it does seem to keep you in equilibrium.
Glad to hear you are ok and the conference presentations went well. I'm sorry to hear about all the grading! Glad too that none of the medical concerns were major.
A quick follow-up re: my grading comment. Many years ago, I met a professor-friend at his campus office before our scheduled dinner that evening. He had been distracted by a department-related emergency, so to keep me busy during his absence he handed me a stack of blue books and said, “Take a look at these, and sort them from best to worst, best-written and most knowledgable first, worst-written and least knowledgeable last.” I had taken several of his classes in the past, and knew the material well enough that I was collaborating with him on a research project at that time. I’m a very fast reader, and he was distracted for nearly an hour, so without marking the student essays I was nevertheless able to sort them fairly well. I couldn’t be sure what the exact thresholds should be between A and A-minus, A-minus and B-plus, and so on, but I was pretty confident about my “best to worst” ranking. Well, my friend was so pleased with the pre-sorting — he said that with no more than one or two exceptions in a batch of 50 he agreed with my ordering — that he invited me to dinner on the evening after his next blue book exam administration, but asked me to come by a bit early. He assured me that not only did my pre-sorting save him some time; it also kept him in a better mood such that he even thought he leaned in the direction of more generous (but still fair) grades as a result of the exercise. In that vein, Professor, do you perhaps have a graduate student or alumnus friend who could give you an informal but still helpful assist with your grading?
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