Be the way

And the days just slip on past. Welcome to the new faculty speedway. Yeah, it’s been a busy couple of weeks since my last entry, but there’s way too much that’s occurred to actually try and keep up with events. Probably best not to even try.

I had breakfast with the Dean of Arts and Sciences this morning. Apparently a thing that new faculty get to do. It was pleasant enough experience. I’m still new enough to this faculty gig that the novelty of being a grown up is fun. The Dean’s live on the other side of campus. The nice side of campus where all the old liberal arts buildings are. Quite lovely actually, particularly since the weather is cool today, so the walk was nice. I even got to keep the mug. Now I know why professors always have that coffee mug with college seals on their desks. They get it from having breakfast with the Dean, or some other such rites. Just one of the small rituals nobody ever talks about. But I’d guess here on campus, you’d be able to tell when the new faculty get their breakfast with the Dean by watching their desk for the appearance of a garnet colored coffee mug.

Garnet & Gold. The school colors of the FSU Seminoles, or ‘Noles’ as they are apparently referred to locally. It took us a while to figure out what noles meant. Just slow on the uptake I guess.

Anyway, finally settling into the swing of things. My office now has all it’s furniture, and even some books on the shelves. Getting into the rhythm of meetings and teaching and meetings. Still need to integrate some research into that somehow, but piece by piece it’s coming.

I’m actually quite enjoying my teaching duties. Thankfully, I’m relatively free of performance anxiety, which has always been a bit of a help. Talks and lectures are not a hurdle for me. Indeed, my current assignment is really quite pleasant, as I have almost no control over student grades, but work almost entirely as an enabler. I’m just there to help students learn the information, work their problems, pass exams, etc. I’m coordinating the labs, but the grad student TAs are running things there. Really I just have to herd the TAs and drop in to lab on Wednesdays and interact with the students a bit. Thankfully, I don’t have to grade the labs, or even stay for the entire lab session. Just enough to get a bit of interaction and then out again.

Ding... Time to wash my bowl.

Jumpy Little Black Dots What Bite the Boy!

So for those of you following the great spot mystery, here’s the update... After waiting for the ‘pox’ to develop, we discovered they weren’t. No blisters, no scabs. So we thought it might be hives, perhaps a reaction to raspberry jam. However, by this last weekend, the spots were multiplying again. A trip to the clinic led to the official diagnosis that they were unexplained red spots, “maybe some kind of viral infection”. Sigh.

However we’ve since discovered that we have a flea infestation, and that Laz seems to be particularly tasty to the little bastards. Unfortunately for the bugs, mom and dad’s Buddhist leanings toward non-violence end when the cheeky little buggers attack the boy. So last night we brought in the heavy weapons, (a vacuum cleaner built like a Russian tank, and chemical warfare in the form of a powder made of, amongst other things, peppermint and cinnamon oil.) Initial prognosis looks like we substantially reduced the population of the bouncy little buggers, though I suspect there will need to be a second wave to truly clear them out.

A Pox on Our House?

Egad! The boy’s got spots. Spots all over his legs and arms. Could it be the ‘pox? We’ll see... More news when we know... Meanwhile I’m off to bed, for I must away ere break of day to aid my students in their quest to conquer electrostatics.

My New Koan: Be the Fire Hose

When I was an undergraduate student at Caltech, a popular metaphor for the student experience there was that it was like drinking from a fire hose. I don’t know whether this image is related to the scene from the Weird Al movie UHF, or if it was unrelated but it was certainly an apt metaphor for the overwhelming wall of stuff that came at us.

Now I’m beginning to find myself feeling a bit in that mode again. The commitments and expectations from this new job are coming on strong and I’m beginning to get that old fire hose feeling again. The difference now is that the commitments are a great deal more creative than reactive. As a student, you’re primarily responding to the stimulus that is thrown at you. Now, many of my commitments are wanting something from me rather that wanting me to do something. I’m not drinking from the fire hose, so much as being liposuctioned by one.

Ah... there’s a pretty image.

Slurpy Little Widget What Gives Laptop Go Juice

The MacBook I ordered with my startup funds finally arrived today. Mostly it looks and acts just like the last one only a little lighter and quite a bit faster. But it’s got this weird power cord. It’s magnetic, so you just bring it in close and it sucks itself into place. Weird. I guess it’s supposed to reduce accidents from people tripping over power cords, or at least that’s what the mac commercials would have you believe.

Lot’s happening right now. Classes started this morning. I’ve moved into a new corner office. Sunshine and I are both attending new meditation groups, and Sunshine just joined a community choir tonight. Laz has developed a thing for fish. Actually, he’s probably had the fish thing for quite a while and we’ve only just noticed it. He also likes macaroni.

Much to cover but time is short, so tonight I will remain brief, and probably blunt. I must take up the quill again regularly though. My scribe is rusty.

The Other Side of the Desk

So here I am, sitting once again in a faculty office in a physics department of some university. In a way, faculty offices pretty much all look the same, and this one is not much different. Mind you, it’s a lot emptier than the usual faculty office as most of the books and papers and stuff hasn’t arrived. But it’s got that feel to it, institutional lighting, some nice, (but not too nice) furniture, and the inevitable smell of academia (probably a mixture of outgassing carpet, aging paper, baking electronics and chalk dust).

The big difference now, of course, is that I’m on the other side of the desk, sitting in the big roller chair and looking across my newly arrived desk (still sporting styrofoam dust from the packaging) at the two empty guest chairs and two nearly empty bookcases. This is my office, 617 Keen, complete with florescent lighting, cinderblock walls, and moderately dysfunctional A/C vents. This will be my new home from home, where new secrets of the universe will be discovered and shared with the dozen or so other people around the world who might care about it.

At the moment, it’s a room filled with potential. The walls are blank, the drawers and shelves empty, the seats untouched. Now it’s up to me to convert the possible into the actual. These chairs will soon be holding students who will look to me to launch careers and explain test scores. The ethernet wire descending from my tiled false ceiling like some lone vine in a sparse industrial jungle will soon be filling my in-box with countless faculty e-mails and other distractions. Up that wire must travel numerous papers and proposals and requests for money and the other things that university professors are expected to provide to the world.

The room is a vessel and the vessel is nearly complete. It’s up to me now to provide the creative spark that fills the space with gold. A daunting task to be sure, but the people here have placed their trust in me. They must feel that I will be able to work some magic here. Now I guess we will have to wait and see if they are right.

Shoe Event Horizon?

I don't know that it's a good thing when life reminds me of Douglas Adams. His worldview tends a bit toward the cynical. Unfortunately, he also seems to have been disturbingly prescient.

In this case, I was struck this morning by how bewildering I find so-called beauty products. I just don't really get it. Maybe it's a girl thing, but I just find the endless masses of bottles and tubes and tubs a bit on the far side of ridiculous. There's a strange fascination with foodstuffs as well. Everything is honey-oat this and cucumber-that. What about the combination of rose petals and yogurt says 'yes, I want to wash myself in that'? I can't imagine that those buying such flavored body wash would actually consider soaping themselves in foodstuffs as a way to get clean. Very odd.

Meanwhile, it is becoming really quite difficult to find just plain products without extra gratuitous extra stuff added. Try finding a hair conditioner that isn't heavily perfumed in the sea of fruit flavors. Or consider the reasoning behind vitamin fortified Coke. All of this, it seems to me, speaks of overactive product tinkering and marketing strategy, which has divorced the product makers from the needs of the product user. It smells of marketing for marketing sake. It seems to me that we have a lot more to buy, but a lot less that is useful. We seem to be heading toward a situation where we will only be able to buy what market analysis says will sell, but it will come in dozens of meaningless varieties.