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Dressing the Part

2010
09.02

Since I’ve been upgraded to a “pseudo-dean,” I’ve been trying to dress the part. If you have to have difficult discussions with people, it’s always best to look like you’re powerful, especially when you’re a youngish looking, short chick. Over the past seven years, I’ve upgraded my wardrobe from blue jeans and t-shirts to khakis and dress shirts, with the occasional sweater | blazer | skirt combo for the days that I had to (1) deliver bad news to students; (2) represent the department at an important function; or (3) ask the dean for resources for myself, my department, or my grad students. I’ve added four suits over the past four years – usually when I had a job interview or went to a national conference – so I do have a varied wardrobe.

PIX: Obviously not MT, but it is her new shirt. What can I say? I’m trying to reclaim pink as a feminist color? LOL.

At least, I thought I had a decent wardrobe until I looked into the closet on Wednesday morning.

Alas, all of my dress clothes tend to be of the fall | winter variety. I have wool blazers. Cashmere sweaters. Turtlenecks by the dozen. My skirts are either long or made of wool. My dress shoes are either sized for wearing thick wool socks or they are boots. In the past, this has never really been a problem, seeing how we’ve had a series of “cool-ish” summers around here. Usually, I’m wearing blazers and sweaters by the middle of September.

Not so this year. This year, we’ve had a hot summer, with temperatures over 90 degrees for days at a time. Heck, we’ve even had days in the triple digits – and I’m talking real temperatures here, not the heat index. It’s been so hot that Jim Cantore tweeted about a neighboring town. And, even though today is September 2, we’re going to be close to 90 degrees again.

Obviously, I won’t be wearing a cashmere sweater to work anytime soon.

I have enough clothes to make it through to the crisp autumn days of fall, but only if I mix and match items. For example, on Monday I wore a short khaki skirt with a white dress shirt and a pink linen blazer. That wasn’t too hot. Yesterday, I wore a short thin wool skirt with a blue linen shirt and a black gabardine blazer – and ended up sweating like a pig. Today, I’m digging out my brown gabardine pants and blazer. Friday, it’ll be a long floral skirt with a dressy shirt and camisole.

Since I have a little extra cash, I ordered a few more items to help extend my wardrobe until the cool weather hits. I found a nifty pair of linen pants (olive green with embroidered flowers down the side) on sale for $11.81. I will pair them with a lacy sleeved tunic for Wednesday wear (i.e., I usually don’t have meetings on those days). I picked up a blue pinstriped dress shirt with a white collar and cuffs to wear with one of my blue suits (I am so sick of white shirts). A new tunic top in midnight blue will work with my long floral skirt, my long gabardine grey skirt, or my short grey wool skirt. The new “shimmery rose blouse” shown above will work with a pair of khakis for a casual Friday. It will also work with my black suit or with my pink blazer. Heck, it might even work with my green corduroy blazer when it gets cold enough. I also bought a black tweed blazer to wear with my long black skirt – so I don’t have to wear the jacket from by black suit all the time. A cool pair of ballet shoes (on sale for $9.99) will allow me to go “hose-less” on the humid days.

Looking forward, I did buy a new green sweater to give me more variety this winter. Plus, I also have a new Irish fishermen’s sweater (acquired in Dublin) and an awesome green scarf for this winter. And for walking the Birdie, new yoga pants with a green performance turtleneck.

Now, watch, the temps will take a dive before my new clothes arrive.

Tags: , Category Just Stuff |

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Five Weeks

2010
09.01

The Equivalent of One Week of Summer Teaching
After Taxes. Includes Labor.

Where does it all go? I spent five weeks of my summer teaching two classes. The amount on my contract looked huge — and it should because we get paid decently for summer work. The amount dedicated to my saving account, however, just keeps shrinking:

  1. 40 percent taken for taxes right off the top.
  2. $300 deposit for Spring Break trip.
  3. $1,050 to fix The Coach’s car.
  4. $77 in teaching supplies for The Coach’s class.
  5. $181 in new clothes for me.
  6. $88 in books for me, including Joel Best’s new stats book.
  7. Another $138 in new clothes for me.

I’ll amend the list as we go. I still need to buy The Coach some pants, plus we need a new dehumidifier for the basement and I’d like a food processor to make pesto in so I don’t have to use the coffee grinder anymore. I was hoping to stash away $3,000, but I’m thinking that’s not gonna’ happen. Grrr.

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Acceptance & My Research Agenda

2010
08.31

A long time ago, at an undergraduate institution less than a day’s drive away from here, I took a class entitled “death and dying” so I could finish up my bachelor’s degree and get on with my life. As a part of the class, we read a book by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. In this book, Kübler-Ross posited that grief had five stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

For my readers: Don’t panic. I’m not dying. It’s just that my thoughts about my relationship with my research agenda seems to mimic this model of grief. Every year, I start off with optimism and hope – and every year I end up in the fourth stage of grief. It goes something like this:

Late August – Stage 1 – Denial: I have an awesome research agenda. I’ve scheduled writing time every day. It doesn’t matter that I have a ton of course preps | service | administrative work. I’m fine. I’ll get a lot done this year.

Early November – Stage 2 – Anger: What the f—? Where did all of this grading come from? Why do people keep scheduling meetings during my research time? When the h— am I supposed to sleep? Why does this always happen to me?

Late January – Stage 3 – Bargaining: Dear karma | God(sess) | Supreme Being, please let me get my conference paper | article | grant proposal written in time. I’ll do anything if you’ll help me. Please, give me just a few extra hours in the day.

Around Spring Break – Stage 4 – Depression: I give up. Karma, you’re a bitch.

Now, I’ve never actually made it to Stage 5 before. Usually depression gives way to denial and I write a whole new research agenda at the start of the new academic year. So, this year, I’m going to starting out at Stage 5. Instead of having unrealistic goals, I’m going to accept the fact that I simply cannot maintain an R1 research agenda while being an administrator at a comprehensive university. I cannot write three articles and teach and be a department chair and be a pseudo-dean (that’s a long story for another time). I cannot go to four conferences while serving on five committees. There are just not enough hours in the day.

So, I offer you a research agenda for the 2010-2011 academic year that is rooted in acceptance:

Finish book chapter by September 1. The writing is done; I just need to convert it from APA to MLA format (which, incidentally, is a big pain in the ass).

Finish teaching article by mid-October. The research is done and I have a pretty solid manuscript, sans lit review. I’ve started the reading for the lit review, so I’m confident that this will be easy to finish.

Finish conference paper by January. I put together 75 pages of research notes during the Scholarly Writing Institute earlier this summer. If I work a little every day, this will get done in time.

Finish conference paper by April. Well, if the paper is accepted to MPSA. If it’s not accepted, I’ll work on it over the summer and bump up my book project instead. I started the background research for this project last spring so I could write my grant proposal. I’ll be collecting the data while in New Zealand. This should be doable.

Keep plodding along on my book project. Yes, I’m setting it on the back burner. I have a pile of books that have been highlighted; now I need to get the notes in my computer. If I do a little bit every day, I should get caught up before the academic year ends. Then, if I get my sabbatical for the 2012 Spring Semester, I’ll spend the summer organizing all my data into a usable outline. If I don’t get my sabbatical, then I’ll keep the project simmering on the back burner while I convert my January conference paper into an article.

I’ll know next spring if this was realistic or not. Ha!

Tags: Category Teaching and Research |

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Katrina Week:
Live Blogging the SPSA

2010
08.30

Jackson Square, New Orleans

Thursday, January 7, 2007: Greetings from New Orleans. I am writing this blog entry on my Palm Pilot while eating dinner at a little Cuban restaurant in the Warehouse District. It helps that the restaurant is in my hotel. It has been a long day of conferencing and my friend has returned home to her husband and children. My day started early enough, with the alarm going off at 5 a.m. Tell me, please, who plans panels at 7:45 a.m. in the Big Easy? How evil is that? UGH!!! I was up late last night, reading papers for the panel, seeing how I was the discussant and needed to make comments that sounded relatively important. I had thought about reading the papers on the plane, but two Dramamine and turbulence kind of kept that from being an option. Yes, it was like flying to the Big Queasy. [LOL]

So, where to begin? Let me just say that I am a nervous flyer under the best of circumstances, so when I saw the weather map in the Memphis Airport I took the extra pill. Honestly I thought they would delay the flight, but they loaded us on the plane, packing us in like cattle on the way to slaughter. We sat on the plane for a while before the announcement came: “The weather in New Orleans has deteriorated. We are taking on more fuel in case we have to circle for a while when we get there.” Ack! Fortunately, the storm had run out of energy when we got there. All I had to do was catch the shuttle and get to the hotel. I have to say, if you are a tourist being dumped in the Quarter, then you probably wouldn’t think the city looked bad at all. Of course, that’s not the case.

My friend D. came to see me and we went to dinner at this place called Tommy’s. We split a $45 bottle of pinot grigio and talked and laughed and generally had a good time. I had a great dish made with crispy duck. Yummy! After our early bird dinner – yes, we ate with the old folks – we managed to make it back to our fancy hotel before the rain started. Well, fancy might be a bit of an overstatement because there is mildew in the bathroom – but the hotel is funky, cheap, and an easy three blocks’ walk to the conference.

After a late night, I got up at the crack of dawn to go to the panel. After picking up the conference program, I found out that my paper panel – the one that was supposed to be moved to Saturday – was actually today at 4 p.m. WTF? After a brief freak out, I went and did my discussant duties. Blah. Meanwhile, my friend was gambling at Harrah’s and losing money. We met back up, went for breakfast at Mother’s where I had never been before. The women behind the counter are hysterical! The food was wicked awesome. I loves me some grits and ham. After breakfast, we went on a mission to find LSU Sugar Bowl shirts. I picked pralines for the other two people in my department and then ended my shopping spree at Faulkner House Books. (Note: Research-related shopping. Seriously heavy luggage.)

My friend left, so I had ample time to finish preppping for my panel. Woot! It’s a good thing I did because I was the only panelist to show up! Ten to one, the other panelists show up tomorrow at the time the panel was supposed to be rescheduled. At any rate, my discussant was one of the top names in this particular field so I got good feedback. That brings us to dinner tonight at the Cuban restaurant with two-for-one margaritas. More tomorrow…

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Retrospective: What I Learned on the Tenure Track

2010
08.30

Blogger’s Note: Today is the first day of school, here in southern Indiana. I wanted to celebrate by sharing this blog entry that I wrote last summer. I still stand by my advice. You may work as a professor, but don’t let it become your whole identity. You — yes, you! — are entitled to have a life while you are on the tenure-track. Trust me and learn from my mistakes — MT

I’m feeling fairly reflective these days. You know, thinking deep thoughts and all that jazz. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve achieved many of the goals I set out for myself (bought a house, got tenure, got promoted). Maybe it’s the approaching school year. Maybe it’s the fact that The Coach is back to football, which gives me a ton of time to think. Or it could be that pesky birthday that ends in zero that’s coming up at the end of the year. Who knows?

What I do know is that over the past six years, I’ve learned a great many things – things that I am just beginning to appreciate now that I have tenure. Thus, I’m offering you The Traveling Ph.D.’s List of Things that I Learned on the Tenure Track:

Lesson 1: Fear is a great motivator.

Although I was raised in a middle-class family (yes, you can have money and still have a crazy family), I was the first person in my father’s family to graduate from college in a long, long time. My grandfather, who died before I was born, had a college degree, but my father dropped out of school when he blew out his knee playing football. Both of my aunts married young and went to work in factories. I only had one cousin who went to college and he dropped out to join the army. So, I spent a great deal of my 20s feeling like the “great hope” of our family – working my way through college, through a very unnecessary master’s degree, through my Ph.D. After all that hard work, I certainly didn’t want to fail at achieving tenure.

It wasn’t the idea of losing my job that was scary – I could have gone back to work in the not-for-profit sector – it was the fear of failure that kept me going. Well that and the fact that my sixth grade teacher called me retarded (and sadly, I am *still* not over that). I would wake up in the middle of the night, fresh from a dream about work, and drag myself to the computer to work on my dissertation (not done when I took my job), and later, to work on my research. Almost every article I have published over the last six years was written in the deep, dead hours of the night.

Lesson 2: I should have spent more time living my life.

During my first three years at my current job, I spent every weekend in my office. Every weekend, both Saturdays and Sundays. I wrote course proposals for a program that I wasn’t the director of. I graded more papers than I probably should have assigned. I over-prepped every class session because I was so afraid that my students would see through my shiny new Ph.D. and realize that I was a gigantic fraud. I was tired, crabby, and annoyed – so annoyed that I applied for lots of jobs in other places, places that I couldn’t afford to live, places that my husband wouldn’t move to, places that looked like the grass would be greener. I did get offers, but nothing compelling enough to make me start the tenure clock all over again.

I don’t have kids, but I did have family obligations. My father was pretty sick the first year I was at USC, but I didn’t have enough time to spend with him. Granted, he was in a nursing home seven hours away, but I still felt guilty about the fact that I felt like I could only get away when he was on his death bed (which happened two or three times that year). When my father did die, I took one day off of work to arrange his affairs. That’s it. One day. But, you know, I should have placed myself, my husband, and my family first more often.

Lesson 3: I should have learned to say no more often.

Repeat after me: “Service is not your friend.” I know that’s not the politically correct thing to say, but it’s true. If your colleagues are telling you that service counts as much as research and teaching, they are lying to you. Now, I am not saying that you should avoid all service – after all, everyone should pitch in when it comes to advising students, advising organizations, and hiring their new colleagues. What I am saying is that junior faculty members should not have to shoulder all of the service obligations for their department. It’s not fair to hand all of that work to individuals who are prepping new courses and trying to get their research out the door. You should do enough service to be collegial, but not so much that it takes over your life. Learn how to say “no” without really saying no.

Lesson 4: I should have worked with my door closed.

I’m a talker, I admit it. If you wander into my office, I will have a nice, long chat with you. Students, colleagues – it doesn’t matter. The problem is, if you’re trying to get your research done, you can’t be talking all the time. This brings me to three corollaries:

  • Corollary A: You should be accessible to your students, but that doesn’t mean you have to be accessible 24 hours a day. Set aside a certain amount of time each day where you don’t answer the door, the phone, or your email. You need that time for yourself.
  • Corollary B: Email is great, but it should not overwhelm your life. Don’t answer student emails at midnight. Turn Outlook off at a reasonable hour each night and don’t turn it back on again until the sun comes up.
  • Corollary C: If you can’t resist the temptation to answer the door/phone, get out of your office. Work in the library, a coffee shop, at home. Just go somewhere where you can have some peace.

Lesson 5: Take a vacation.

Listen to me carefully: Just because you are on the tenure track, you should not spend all of your time working. It’s counterproductive. If you’re like me, you’ll get annoyed. You’ll spend all your energy being resentful and that just gums up the works. Trust me. Your brain needs time to rejuvenate itself. And when I say, take a vacation, I don’t mean take a vacation and do research. No! What I mean is that you need to leave your work behind and get the heck out of Dodge. Think about it – if you are thousands of miles from home, you can’t do anything about work problems anyways, so you can sit back and enjoy yourself.

Finis

Originally Published: August 20, 2009

Tags: , , , Category Retrospective, Teaching and Research |

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Five Years Ago:
My Thoughts on Katrina

2010
08.29

In the Treme: Six Months After Katrina

The Problem of Wetland Loss in Louisiana
by MT Hallock Morris
August 30, 2005

I am an unabashed environmentalist. For the past 10 years, I have been studying the political, the social, and the economic impacts of wetland loss. I started small, looking at the local effects of wetland loss in a small Midwestern community. Over the years, I traveled to Louisiana, thanks in large part to an internship through NCCED. I worked for a nonprofit in New Iberia, where I did strategic planning related to the area’s natural resources. I spent three long years writing a dissertation that looked at how flood control and transportation policies along the Mississippi River negatively affected the fragile fringe along Louisiana’s Gulf Coast.

This morning, I could not sleep. I worry about my friends, the friends of my friends, and the family of my friends … all of whom had so much to lose when Katrina came rushing through. I worry about my own family located further inland, but still subject to tropical storm force winds. Most of all, I worry about my favorite city in the world and wonder if there will be anything left to New Orleans if the rumors about levee breaches are true.

In my dissertation, I noted that Louisiana:

… is a modern day Atlantis. Underneath the lush, exotic beauty of cypress trees, egrets, and French-inspired architecture, Louisiana’s coast is sinking into the sea at an alarming rate. By 2050, it is expected that the state will lose more than 1 million acres of coastal wetlands – an area the size of Rhode Island. Within five decades, the city of New Orleans will be an island in danger of being washed away by the next hurricane. As Mike Tidwell (2003) writes, Louisiana “is literally washing out to sea, surrendering to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s an unfolding calamity of fantastic magnitude, taking with it entire Cajun towns and an age-old way of life.”

Lynton Caldwell (1998) writes: “Too often environmental disasters have been attributed to accident or to the malevolence of nature, whereas a proclivity of humans for putting themselves at risk to natural hazards may be the real cause of catastrophe.” In the case of Louisiana, Caldwell is on target. Human actions, both intentional and unintentional, have had a vast impact on the fragile fringe that is the state’s coastline. These impacts started over three hundred years ago when Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, selected a winding bend of the lower Mississippi River as the location for the new settlement of New Orleans. Unaware of the shifting nature of the river and its role in delta building, Le Moyne unwittingly set into motion a battle against nature when his engineers built the first levees to protect human interests. (Tidwell, 2003; Wilds, DuFour, and Cowan, 1996) As Tidwell (2003) states:

“So began nearly three centuries of human struggle against the formidable river: the fashioning of ever more elaborate levees, spillways, locks, jetties, and other structures designed to completely corset the lower Mississippi. For the region to prosper, it was considered absolutely critical to protect crops and settlements from inundation and to maintain safe and dependable navigation routes.”

Last night, I was discouraged by the news coverage of what some have called our “American tsunami.” It was more than just the pictures of flooded homes, comments about loss of life, and speculation about whether the levees would hold. No, my discouragement was fueled by the fact that the news media did not use this teachable moment to discuss the role that Louisiana’s wetland loss may have played in this disaster. You see, coastal wetlands are great buffer zones and when they become tattered and torn – like Louisiana’s fragile coastline – the likelihood of a huge storm surge increases dramatically. It’s not just New Orleans that has been affected, although that is what the news media focuses on. It’s the parishes south of New Orleans where the damage will probably be the greatest.

After tossing and turning most of the night – I am an insomniac in the best of times – I decided to get up and cruise the Internet. Finally, there are some stories that look at the problems caused by the catastrophic loss of wetlands in Louisiana. The question remains: Will our federal government stand up and take notice? Sure, we’ll see an outpouring of funds to help rebuild homes and businesses, but will the needed money finally be set aside to preserve and rebuilt the wetlands of Louisiana?

If you think this is a Louisiana problem, think again. If the loss of life and cultural resources doesn’t have an influence over your thoughts on this matter, then maybe a direct impact on your pocketbook will. This one storm has made wholesale gasoline prices surge. Natural gas prices, which have also been on the rise this summer, have also been dramatically affected by Katrina as the NYMEX “declared Force Majeure for remaining delivery obligations in the August contract month due to a shutdown at the Henry Hub facility operated by Sabine Pipeline in Louisiana.” We will all eventually pay for the loss of Louisiana’s wetlands, so why not ante up the restoration money now?

Tags: , , Category Retrospective, Teaching and Research, Travel and Culture |

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Taking a Tumble

2010
08.26

I am such a follower.
Yes, I am going to try using Tumblr for shortish shared stuff.
We’ll see how long that lasts.
If you’re on Tumblr, check me out here: http://travelingphd.tumblr.com/

Tags: Category Just Stuff |

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Summer III

2010
08.22

I have just closed the (grade)book on my Summer III classes.
Next up: New Administrative Duties.

Tags: Category Teaching and Research |

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Saturday Quiz

2010
08.21

Can you name the film that featured this poem? 
We watched it in my Politics and Pop Culture class this week.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

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Realization

2010
08.20

I just realized that for for the first time in nine years, I didn’t have to sit in the stands sweating my butt off as my husband’s football team tackled its first opponent of the year. Instead, we passed a pleasant evening visiting with a friend, eating at the Firefly, and practicing new bowling strategies. While we were having fun, The Coach’s former team lost 49-6.

I think I could get used to this “football sabbatical.”

Tags: Category The Home Front |

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