Dr. Shellie

I haven’t written much lately. Life is somewhat in flux, though I still have 2 months before moving. I am mentally tagging the furniture in our house, separating it into "worth taking" and "not worth taking" categories. I am trying to work up the energy to do my lab reports (!) and work on grant submissions (!) — not 2 things one usually does at the same time. I am Googling my new neighborhood incessantly, trying to determine the availablity of yoga classes, dentists, gyms, CSA farm share programs, bloggers, jogging paths, and restaurants. I am checking retail outlets for my favorite local, sustainably produced, organic jam– which I will continue to buy in NewCity DESPITE the fact that it will no longer be local or (if you factor in the transport) particularly sustainable, because it is darn good jam. I am having delusions of grandeur about the projects I will finish before I go.

In short: I am trying to convince myself that my life is not about to change. Though it is.

People keep asking me if I am excited to go. Yes, I am. I am excited about my job and my lab and my students and exploring a new city. At the same time, I feel a little like (in the words of Candid Engineer), someone moved my cheese.

After college, I spent a year studying abroad in a country not entirely dissimilar to our own. All year, I complained: the supermarkets closed too early, the restaurants were too expensive, the trains cost too much, and there was nothing to do but go to the pub. Now in fact, there was also an excellent weekend market, a really good sandwich shop that sold bottled, fresh orange juice long before it was cool, beautiful architecture, a river for punting, a cute coffee shop, and a number of other good features. But somehow I was hung up on what the place was not. I never realized this until I got to grad school, and watched the European students try to adapt. Like me, a number of them got quite caught up in what our city was not– not Europe. Germans and French, Swiss and Austrians, Spanish and Danes, citizens of countries with antagonisms stretching back over the centuries– all came together in their criticism of American life, from the supposedly inane way that we like to say, "Hi, how are you?" but not expect an answer, to the difficulty of buying good cheese, to the lack of efficient public transport. I tell you, all the problems of the EU could be solved overnight if each citizen of a member country were required to study in America for a year.

I promised I would not be like that again. I would adapt. I would look for the good in each place, and try not to harp on the bad.

And yet, leaving this place still feels like a loss. Maybe that is inevitable.

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 am sitting in on a class that my advisor is teaching this semester, and have also taught a few of the classes when he was away. I really like his lecturing style and find the material very easy to follow. In many of my undergrad and graduate science classes, the professor tried to pack as much material as possible into the class session. I was left frantically taking notes, barely able to process what was going on. In contrast, in this class, my advisor usually reviews the last class in the first ten minutes, and then goes on to cover a smaller, selected amount of material in the rest of the session. This way, you can process what is happening in "real time". And, since you see most of the material twice, the retention is better. I may adopt this approach in my classes next year.

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.

For a long time, I felt that I should be an infinitely more organized and productive person with no need for house cleaners. I also suspected that hiring a cleaner might indicate a lazy, bankrupt moral character and a certain disconnect from the realities of everyday existence. And since I had read "Nickel and Dimed", I knew that house cleaners who work for maid services can end up making insanely, exploitatively small amounts of money per hour, while the maid service collects most of your payment.

On the other hand, I had heard many academics advise that as soon as you can afford it, household help was completely worth it. And our house was getting messier and messier as we put in more and more time at work.

So we went for it. My husband found independent cleaners, a family that runs their own service. They come once a week, and the three of them finish our house in an hour. It is a wonderful thing.

First, there is no longer any need to argue about who last cleaned the toilet. This, in itself, is worth it. Second, now that the cleaners do the routine stuff, we have the chance to tackle the harder things– like figuring out how to fix a broken dresser, or get rid of the spare table that has been clogging up the living room. And third, it is immensely comforting to know that we have just a little help in battling the forces of chaos.

Financially, hiring cleaners will not be an option for everyone (after all, I don’t suppose the cleaners hire cleaners, right?). But if you are overwhelmed by your own house and can afford the cost, I encourage you to try it out.