Some memories from last weekend at my father-in-law's

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My son, upon hearing the grandfather clock chime on the hour, running from wherever he was in the house to the clock, peering inside to see the gears turn. Every time.

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Talking and making blinkybugs with geeky brother-in-law (Dr. H.'s sister's husband) and our niece.

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My daughter, showing all of her stuffed animals to her great grandfather (age > 97) one by one. Seeing 20 years fall away from his face when she made him laugh.

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Dr. H's brother's fabulous impression of their father. A feature of any holiday gathering.

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Realizing I'm really one of the family now. Paper plates at the big meal and everything.

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My daughter and my niece, laughing and playing in the big bathtub.

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My son and my nephew, one or both of whom had decided the big tub was too big and scary, playing together in the smaller bathtub.

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Dr. H's grandmother (age > 96), exclaiming in delight that my children wanted to take some of her beaded jewelry home with them.

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My father-in-law's partner, a wonderful woman my children call "Nana", working miracles on my son's eating habits.

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Meeting the wonderful children Dr. H's brother has custody of. Hearing him speak with pride about taking on this responsibility. (Their mother, his girlfriend, is in rehab.) Adulthood suits him. Having a male in their life take some responsibility for once suits them.

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My sister-in-law, glowing and brimming with stories and excitement after her 20th high school reunion.

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My father-in-law, a former elementary school teacher, reading to my children, extremely patient with all their questions.


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All six children, screaming and ripping open presents in a Hanukkah/Solstice/Secular Holiday/New Year/Christmas gift event.


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Scenes from Breakfast on the Road

cholesterol (noun): a compound of the steroid type which occurs normally in most body tissues and is believed to promote atherosclerosis. From Greek khole ‘bile’ + stereos ‘stiff’.

sucrose (noun): table sugar, a disaccharide of glucose and fructose found in many plants, including sugar maples. From French sucre "sugar"

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Dalton: Is this maple syrup?

Me: Yes, Dalton.

Dalton: (picks up container) I'm going to put it on my eggs!

Me: Uh...

Dalton: Yeah! (pours on eggs)

Curie: What's this, Mommy? (holds up small container)

Me: That is butter.

Curie: Oh! It's butter to dip my bacon in! (demonstrates)

Peace of Mind

We returned from our sabbaticals in June and our kids quickly integrated back in to their old daycare, situated on Dr. H.'s campus. We are very happy with the place, mainly because the kids seem to enjoy it so much. Though they enjoy the setting in different ways.

Curie has many friends and runs around with them all day long, participating in a lot of cooperative play. Dalton, on the other hand, enjoys playing by himself and figuring things out. He doesn't tend to seek out other children (except for Curie on occasion) and often simply ignores them when they are close by. I've spoken about this before, when the kids were in daycare in Sabbatical Town. (Our sabbatical daycare provider found this behavior odd and somewhat troubling. I attributed it to having two geeky parents.)

Having moved into the preschool room in our old daycare resulted in a new wave of people interacting with both our children, and thus, a fresh perspective. The preschool teachers, it turns out, do not think Dalton has any problematic social issues - mainly because he interacts fine with adults, participates in some activities, and interacts with other children sometimes. The believe (like me) that he is just a kid who is fine being on his own. However, they do think it would not be a bad idea to encourage him to play with his peers on occasion.

They shared with us one of their strategies for encouraging him. During their twice daily outside times, Dalton normally grabs a bike-like toy and rides it around by himself, ignoring other children. Now, a few times a week, they pull the bikes in before letting the kids out. Why? So my son will be encouraged to play with other kids on the playground once in a while. And it works, on those days he does play with other children, without any additional prompting.

But did you catch that? Our daycare rearranges activities just because they think it might be be a good idea for one of the children in the (largish) group.

I love that place.

No wonder

Our house is constantly a mess. At this point, we have given up on actually having a clean house, we just aim to keep it from being too disgusting so our neighbors don't call social services on us. We have been planning to hire a housecleaning service since the twins were born, but there has never been a moment when the house clean enough for long enough for me to be willing to bring them in for a quote.

My mom was here two weekends ago. We all had a great time and I was once again reminded that it is desirable for adults to outnumber children.

On Friday, after a long day of work, airport runs, cooking and kids, we got the kids in bed. My mother went to unpack. Dr. H and I immediately collapsed on the couch with our laptops. Me on my new Macbook, reading NYT articles and blogs; him on his Vaio, playing Kingdom of Loathing. A short time later, my mother begins to pick up the living room. I try to stop her, but she says "Well, I just thought it would be nice, you know, so everything is straightened when we come down in the morning."

Dr. H and I look at each other in amazement. Cleaning is almost never the first thing we think of once the kids are in bed.

"That explains a lot." I say, looking around at the squalor we call our home.

It made me think immediately of Emma Jane's observation that some people run their lives differently than others.

Friday Cat Blogging

My other set of twins:

Nostalgia

One of my students recently began a new relationship. She has begun to come late to class - afternoon labs, specifically. She has always been one to be a little late to her first class in the morning, and she has never been one to be inconspicuous upon entry. But now, things are noticeably different - she enters with a different manner, with wet hair, looking satiated and tired.

I remember those days.

I don't remember it looking so obvious. In hindsight, I'm sure it was.

Um, Thanks but No Thanks

The other day, Dr. H was taking the kids to their preschool on his campus. Dalton was being slow in opening and going through the door, as he often is. He loves doors! He is all about the doors. In, out, in, open, close, open, out, in, close - anyway you get the idea. Dr. H is attempting to hurry him along when another parent comes in and tries to help also.

She says to our son, in a dramatic voice: "You need to go in fast because the bad man is coming!"

What. The. Hell. ?!?

Dr. H was rendered speechless. Fortunately, having never heard such a thing before, Dalton seemed totally oblivious.

Working Late, Trapped by Frat Boys

I'm in my office and cannot leave without calling "Bill" or "Anthony".

A fraternity is doing a "sacred ritual" in my building. My working late tonight is interfering with their plans. I graciously offered to stay in my office until I have to leave. After much consultation, the young men have decided that this is preferable to waiting for me to leave. I have two phone numbers to call when I want to leave, and one of the young men will come and escort me out of the building. So polite, students today.

[Seriously, they were actually very profuse in their thanks for my willingness to be so accommodating.]

Long Day RBoC

A whole day without class should have given me plenty of time to get things done prior to a conference I'm leaving for on Thursday morning. This is my planned week of no lab meetings due to the conference. Unfortunately, I only had a slightly productive day. I:

• Went to a committee meeting
  
• Got to observe a senior administrator continually try to steer the committee members away from thinking they might have any role in actual decision making (fun!)
  
• Answered e-mails for my on-line class regarding blackboard gradebook weirdness
  
• Dealt with copy-and-paste Internet plagiarism in my on-line class
  
• Graded two assignments for my on-line class
  
• Met with students in senior-level semi-elective pulling their hair out about a homework assignment. One guy is like "Do you really expect us to turn this in today?" ...as if that is the most unreasonable thing in the world. I did say something along the lines of "What I expected was for you to start it before today." Though I did decide to give them until tomorrow, for a different reason.
  
• Discovered something I thought was in the text for my senior-level required course, was not. Bummer, as I had given them a problem and told them we weren't going over it in class because there is an example in the text. Made handout.
  
• Composed e-mail to chair and registrar to fix Spring class schedule
  
• Arranged water treatment plant tour for adjunct's class
  
• Met with student prep TA for adjunct's lab to give directions on lab prep
  
• Had impromptu department meeting to discuss curricular changes
  
• Realized at about 5:20 I have not yet prepped tomorrow's classes
  
• Gathered some stuff to bring home for class prep, realized this would take a while, called Dr. H, he says "stay, I will get them to bed" Yea!
  

Then I could relax and become quite productive:

• Wrote exam for this Friday when I will be away at a conference
  
• Prepared lecture, overheads and handouts for senior-level required course for tomorrow
  
• Prepared assignment to replace Friday's class meeting in required course
  
• Prepared lecture, overheads and handouts for senior-level semi-elective course for tomorrow
  
• Wrote homework assignment for required course for next week to hand out tomorrow
  
• Wrote study guide for next week's exam in required course
  
• Wrote homework key for this week's assignment in required course and put on Blackboard to appear Friday.
  

Now, I should probably get some sleep.

What not to do if you are in a one-year position hoping to become tenure-track

* Announce to the department chair that your freshman students will be in his office tomorrow because you are going to ream them out in class today.

* Disappointed that the students don't know how to do something, get angry and tell them if they fuck up at their [health-related] jobs in the future, they will kill people.

* Use "fuck" four times in your rant, but never tell the students why you are mad. Do this dramatically enough that word gets around and other students start using "pulled a [your last name] on so-and-so" synonymously with "told so-and-so off". Bonus points if faculty in other departments hear about the rant and mention it to the department chair.

* Ignore all advice/course materials/handouts given to you by others who have taught the courses you are teaching. Instead, change your materials, style and approach daily, doing the first thing that comes into your head.

* Make fun of a senior level student for not knowing a conversion factor. Do this when the student is the only one available to be your lab assistant for two different labs. Make sure to keep making fun of him for about 15 minutes in front of a room full of freshman women.

* Exclaim in a happy voice "Only 1/3 of my class is getting D's or F's!" without determining whether this is typical for the course you are teaching.

* Go through 9 chapters of a 24 chapter, two-semester text in the first three weeks of class.

* Assume the other faculty member who prepped your lab when you were behind was happy to do it.

I concede Wikipedia is not without its problems

I love Wikipedia. I think it has its uses in education, but the challenge, of course, is for us to help students learn to use it appropriately. I wish I could somehow make this happen before they use it inappropriately. On the other hand, inappropriate use sometimes provides me with an opening. Here is an exchange with one of my general education students. The course is theme based and could be something like, let's say, science and art.

To: twice@slac.edu

From: studenta@slac.edu

Hi Dr. Twice: I am curious about a question on the online quiz. The question is "approximately when did synthetic pigments come on the scene?" I answered 200-500 years ago and it was wrong, so I took the test again. The question appeared so I answered 500-1000 years ago even though I was certain it as 200-500 years ago and again it was wrong! I do not understand since everything I have read points to the
1700's and Prussian blue being the first synthetic pigment.

What am I missing?

[Student]


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To: studenta@slac.edu

From: twice@slac.edu

Hi [Student],

On page 187 in Colour: Why the World isn't Grey, Rissotti explains that the first synthetic pigments were used in the second millennium B.C. (White Lead and Blue Frit, for example). I realize that Wikipedia in one place says Prussian Blue was first, and in another place that it was the first _modern_ synthetic pigment. However, the assigned reading in the Colour course textbook, makes the distinction between natural pigments (minerals), and synthetic ones (those that must be manufactured in some way), without somehow limiting the idea to the modern era.

Please note that Wikipedia is a site with user generated content and, while incredibly helpful, is not necessarily authoritative. This section, and in particular this claim, on the Wikipedia site is not fully referenced, which makes it more questionable. (It is best to confirm these details with other sources.) While the 1700's and on were extremely important in the development and use of synthetic pigments, synthetic pigments were used in antiquity.

-Dr. Twice

I'm in the middle of an ongoing (seven months!) e-mail discussion with my husband, my husband's first cousin once removed, his second cousin (the son of the f.c.o.r) and his sister's husband (my brother-in-law-in-law) on the merits of Wikipedia. The f.c.o.r. thinks it is bad, bad, bad. He has a humanities background, the others, who are more in favor of Wikipedia, have technical backgrounds. I've read several newspaper and magazine articles in the midst of this discussion that speak to this divide. Scientists, in general, are more likely to feel positively about Wikipedia. Reasons suggested include a greater likelihood of participation in the creation of wiki content among scientists, a higher comfort level in the scientific community with on-line collaboration and the earlier adoption of this format by scientists. All of these lead to perhaps more developed and vetted articles in the sciences, leading to more use/trust/participation, leading to more developed and vetted articles, and so on.

I sent the e-mail exchange to f.c.o.r. His response?

"So there!"

In my defense, I never said there weren't any problems. And the pigment entry has been updated now, one of the strengths of a wiki.

Sometimes students understand right away...

I will be away for a few days at a conference next week. This means I will miss one of my upper division labs, and I scheduled a "day off" in the other upper division lab. I almost never cancel class, but the lab falls midweek, missing Thanksgiving, Labor Day and Columbus Day, so it already has more meetings than any other lab in our department. Another reason is that the students in the two classes overlap considerably, and we have a lot due in both (labs, huge problem sets, an exam, etc.).

With that set up, enter one of my more industrious and polite students:

"Dr. Twice?"

"Yes?"

"Mary and I thought we would come in next week, you know, because we don't have lab, and finish the second part of this one. Then we could have a day off later."

"Um, well, if you come in, then I don't really get the afternoon off."

"Ah. Never mind."