Dr. Shellie

Suppose your students’ office space has room for only two of the following three groups of items. Which do you choose?

1. Sink, microwave, and coffee maker

2. Sofa

3. Round table with chairs and whiteboard

Additional information: there is no conference room or women’s bathroom on the floor, and no common kitchen or lounge in the building (at least, not that I have found yet).

Discuss.

I went to meet the facilities manager yesterday to discuss lab renovations for the fall. At some point they asked whether white was OK for the student office space.

"You mean I have a choice? I asked rather stupidly.

"Well it’s your space– you can have whatever color you want," he said.

"You mean, I can have it painted yellow?" I asked.

Yes, they said, I can have it painted yellow.

I was totally blown away by this thought.

Ok, so rationally I realize that being pleased and/or surprised by this is totally inane. After all, my university is investing a huge sum of money in me for my startup costs– initial student salaries, summer salary, lab renovation costs, equipment, etc. Painting the room yellow instead of white costs, uh, maybe $25? So I shouldn’t really be so surprised.

I think I haven’t yet adjusted to the abrupt jump in decision-making power between postdoc and assistant professor. Here at my current university, I need my postdoc advisor’s signature to buy anything that costs more than a hundred dollars. When I go visit my future university, people ask me if I need to make any structural modifications to the building.* It is startling. I must remember I am in charge now.

Just as I was starting to worry about all my time going into teaching next year, with nary a minute for research, a memo from the dean’s office arrived in my inbox. The teaching load for first year assistant professors has been reduced by one course.

Today I taught a lecture for my postdoc advisor, who is out of town. It reminded me how much I love teaching. I really like communicating with people in general (even in foreign languages that I speak quite poorly). I also like playing with concepts to distill them into presentable form.

I didn’t do any formal teaching in grad school or postdoc, since the implicit message was that we should focus on research instead, so we could get faculty jobs. This is somewhat ironic, since a big part of the job of a research professor is, in fact, to teach.

Now I am looking forward to my fall class, which will be a seminar class on current research topics in my field. I am a little afraid it will take up all my time, but I think it will be enjoyable.

I have the best two students in the world. Smart, motivated, focussed, positive, cheerful, helpful, and happy to come work with me in the fall.

Now off to finish that postdoc…!