Getting things together

Well, the dust is settling and I am really starting to get a handle on teaching. I love it, but it takes so much time. The problem is that the class that I am teaching uses examples from some archaic fields that were popular in the 50's and 60's but now only make up about a 1/3 of the areas that students are hired in. I took over the class from more senior faculty who are fabulous teachers, but don't have as much experience in these new areas. I chose to rewrite a lot of exams, quizzes, and worksheets to include examples from the new fields. I think the students benefit from this tremendously, but it takes a lot of time.

I keep hearing from other faculty something along the lines of ...Wow we have heard what you are doing with your course and we are so excited. That must have taken a lot of time. Hope we can get your notes, lectures, and other materials for when we have to teach that next.

I am not sure if this means wow we love what you are doing or wow you are crazy to work that hard.

Regardless the dust is settling.

On another note, I am having trouble getting papers out. I have a few papers left from the post doc. One in particular just came back from review, with minor requests for changes. Unfortunately, postdoc advisor did not have a chance to review this paper before it went out (it was for an invited issue) so he told me to send it without his comments and he would add his changes when we addressed reviewer comments. Well, wouldn't you know it almost all the criticisms address issues that he would have caught if he had read the paper. Now he has had it for 2-3 months, still don't have comments, and I am going crazy. The kicker was last week he said, I sure hope I finish this soon because we're having the baby on Tuesday. I'm like..excuse me...baby? [This can only happen with male faculty.] So my chances of getting my paper back just sunk into infinitismal. And the worst part is that I would never harass a female faculty member about getting a paper back a week after having a baby, so I feel guilty even calling him to ask how its going. Oh well. At least the reviews were positive.