Construction

On campus...

So....they broke ground a new dorm project at the end of spring semester, and I've been slightly deluded in thinking that they were targeting the coming fall for completion. I walk past this every day (incidentally there is evidence of a third level since I took this photo). I started to equate their progress with mine, thinking: if they can get freshman in there by the start of the semester I should be done with X,Y, Z. It started to feel like an albatross to me. 

Turns out, it's slated for next fall.

humanity fail

As a professor I try to keep my classes current. Recently, while looking for a succinct explanation of the mass movement of people that is happening right now advertising offered a total fail.

Hundreds of thousands of people drowning, being denied asylum, being effectively trapped in purgatory that we call refugee camps and more....total fail, humanity.

It's humid in here.

The gap between posts perfectly sums up my semester. I look up in the afternoon these days and it has suddenly become midnight (not literally). I consider my journaling here and realize that it will have to be a semester end summary instead of a play-by-play--that's okay. I'm told that you are forgiven your first year of the tenure-track. That the gaps in your work (and life....please say and life too) are expected--the subtext reads: as long as they don't continue into your second year.

Now, some summary detail:

I taught a class. A big one. Some people loved it. Some people hated it. That's how it goes with these large lectures. The good news is this: I only teach this one every other year and it's my only large lecture, also, I'm not holding out for universal popularity.

I started my new research. I have some seed funding from my hire negotiations and as a result I was able to hit the ground running with my new project. I am excited about this project for a number of reasons, but non-academically speaking, I am most excited about the part where I'm only gone for 2-3 weeks at a time instead of months. Plus, the food is good.

My first site visit was during the end of September - early October and the highlights were the wine, the cheese, and the pintxos. Oh and the scenery, I suppose. I arrived early to have meetings with my research partners, adjust to jet lag (I really think I am better at this than I am--I must strive to improve--suggestions welcome). These extra couple days also allowed me some tourist time, and I took a long walk through the city which I found to be a beautiful blend of old and new. Museum. Odd sporting event. Graffiti. Food. Wine.

I met some fabulous people and it was hard at times to remember that I was there as a researcher. This is my research on knowledge exchange in the food system and to that end I visited food co-ops, dairies, organic farms, bakeries, cideries, wineries, urban farms, and so on. Some photos here, but there is a link to a full album of shots on the right hand side where I keep such things.

Guggenheim

Nuns watch the cliff diving event

This just seemed odd to me.

"reading" at lunch

 

old facade, "modern" beyond

1930s stone mill

In prep for cheesemaking

My "expiration date" made me a bit nervous because it was my flight date too.

They make this sound easy by saying it's only 240 steps...

2 days old

So I could get back through border security after walking around farms.

These peppers have a special place in my heart--

Grape press

This photo is misleading because it is from the beginning of my fieldwork

This makes up the first episode of what I hope is a much longer term research venture. The next trip is in January and I get to bring a special research assistant with me (read: Joe). The site is especially interesting to me because the major push for normalizing relations, beyond the diaspora is the big ag companies, so multi-year research that starts during this transition phase should be spectacularly insightful....(read: I hope this works).

Oktoberfesting

This upcoming trip is our major travel for the year, but we've done some other regional exploring and had a moment of unexpected travel that brought us home for Thanksgiving.

We have checked out some sights near and far, headed south to see my university peeps from last year in a make-shift Oktoberfest, gone apple picking (50 pounds of apples ended up not being enough, so we went again...), attempted some hikes (we're learning slowly that state parks here are not analogous to what we're used to), saw some old friends, and tried to make the best of a short trip west (where we saw hiking goats!).

Westy from the West

This is December (75 degrees)

This is November (50 degrees)

Seeing our mountains--it was in the 30s in OR

Not mountain goats

Still December....

It has been ridiculously warm here--which I secretly delight in because I'm cold all the time. It's in the 70s today and chance of thunderstorms. It's warmer outside than in our house, but it's also quite humid so we're staying in our artificially temperate world.

I just looked up again and it's dark. The time flies.

Before the storm

I fully realized on Friday afternoon that this is my last weekend before the academic clock begins to tick. Yes, classes begin on Tuesday and yes, I teach my first class on Wednesday...and suddenly I will have almost 200 students to teach (read: deal with). But it is also the start of my tenure clock at a major research university. As always I have had the competing work/don't work entities on my proverbial shoulders basically all summer and especially this weekend.

So with that in mind I did not sync my files and bring them home. I did not bring home the textbook for my class. I left all my writing on campus. In fact, before checking out for the weekend, I don't think I even woke up my computer to tell it to go to sleep or shut down what I was working on before 5 hours of meetings swept away my productivity earlier in the day.

Instead of doing what I should be doing...I spent the vast majority of yesterday reading for pleasure. And finished the day by enjoying an extravagant meal in an odd setting. It felt good to be generally avoiding campus, not just because it might be one of my few opportunities to actively do so in the near future, but also because it is move-in weekend...and I remember what that's like.

Relevance

I spent the last three months attempting to find something relevant to discuss here. But to be honest it felt either contrived or whiny. I think I pushed my nose a bit too close to the grindstone in trying to prepare for what felt akin to an
unattainable future. I worried and I wrote and I applied for jobs and I taught and stupidly I fussed over whether my students liked my classes.

I'd love to say that the first semester as professor allowed for the glorious unburdening of my grad school stress and inferiority complex, but it might have actually heightened it as I stretched my fingertips into the unknown.

Here I am in the new year. I've had the opportunity to breathe and relax and just be. Just be at home. Just be out in the snow. Just be on the trail. Just be looking for the bottom of the glass (excellent, beer, wine and whiskey). Just be lost in a book. Just be with Joe. Calm. Refresh. Renewal.

At home on the Metolius

Part of this is due to the fact that I have been snatched up for a tenure-track position at the earliest possible time in the job season--a feat I would never have thought to accomplish. I am thrilled and terrified. Mostly thrilled. And also terrified.

The academic life is one of those places you go that you have great autonomy as compared with other careers--excepting the fact that you are tied to a University. And that the best department for you, the best fit academically may not be in the location best-suited to your soul. I tried to avoid applying for positions anywhere that I thought would feel as though we'd been dragged to the inner-circles of hell. But we are ending up, for the foreseeable future (tenure track!) on the wrong coast.

It will be my fourth cross-country move as an adult, my ninth overall. Each trip offers something different, although this one will include three travel averse kitties, so it'll be more of a race I suppose. We have a lot of decisions to make (terrifying) and I will get to start working on my tenure file in earnest (thrilling).

Otherwise, in the last few months I have tried to not adopt the usual hobbit/hermit/hibernating version of myself.

Visit to the Shenandoah

In Philly

We've taken advantage of the fact that I'm making a proper wage to minimize the distance between us, meeting in Denver at the GABF in October and spending Thanksgiving in Maine. I have also had a couple of visitors which has been great...and this popped up on my route to the metro which also gave me a nice warm fuzzy:

Bringing Oregon to Virginia!

I also tried to remember some of the things I like out of the city in the fall--apple picking, cider, hiking amongst deciduous trees. Although I can't remember ever having a concession stand of this sort at a trail head before...

 

Shenandoah

I head back east this coming weekend for what will be another exciting term. I've planned some rigorous classes, which are sure to make me unpopular with most students ; )

It smells different here...

So I've been back in the city for a little over a month and it is all at once a beautiful and terrifying place. I am trying to take advantage of being in this particular place (and having an income)--this has mostly taken the form of going to events, such as a soccer game and some food-related dinners at the museum. I realize I should have been taking pictures. I've spent a couple of evenings in the last few weeks partaking in glorious meals within the garden. It's nice and it gets me out. I'm trying very hard to not go hermit or in any way replicate the loneliness of the field. It's going moderately well.

Something about living here before makes it feel a little bit like putting on an old shoe everyday. I have adopted all of my old (bad) habits--jaywalking, left side of escalator protocol and etcetera. I used to get annoyed with the morning and evening rush in the underground, but now a more than a decade later, a new layer/source of irritation has emerged. Oh smartphones, how I love and hate thee. There is a very specific sort of crowd behavior that has conditioned people for the peak hours commute. The smartphone has disrupted that significantly. I find myself wanting to shake people, shouting into their faces "you're in a crowd! change the song/send the text/check twitter LATER! p.s. I hate you. Also you are either the epitome of rush-hour conformity or its downfall." But I don't, I just try to be all zen about it and navigate my way through what has become a maze-like space.

I have to say I'm enjoying the city more with a soundtrack. Grocery shopping and walking through campus feels lighter when I can drown it out with my own music. (I know, I know, but still...). I have also found that earbuds are a clever method of avoidance--I'm sorry were you trying to flag me down to answer some political survey? I'm pretending I can't hear you over the bass. The earbuds though brilliant for the auditory are no assistance for the olfactory. There are myriad smells in the city and I can't say I like them all that much. I am already imagining the gulps of air I will take when I step foot on the tarmac back in the high desert in the winter.

Oh yes, and then there is the whole being a professor thing. They call me Professor. It's taking some getting used to. But I like it. A lot. So far I am very impressed with the students and the school. Now that I can get around campus better--city block campus is both helpful and weird--I feel more confident. I've also found some shortcuts through campus which take me by such gems as this phone booth, through some creative landscaping (they were trimming the basil hedge yesterday:good smell), and through the square by the library where I superstitiously pass under the "professor's gate" every day. 

Candidate no more

After six years of the hardest academic work I have ever had to do, I am pleased to call myself Dr.

I feel as though things have building to this moment since I arrived on campus in 2008. I watched a number of students defend before me, always with a knot in my stomach and at least half as nervous as they must have been. What I know now, after standing in that spot myself, is that you really do become the expert.

I  have just a few minor edits to make the document ready for final submission and then, that is it.

That is it.

That is it.

I now have a new answer to 'the' question: I am an Assistant Professor.