Working Too Hard!!

So I haven't posted to my blog in about a month... After having an amazing long Thanksgiving weekend, things at work started moving full speed ahead. I reverted back to grad school habits of replacing meals with protein bars so I can keep working, and working late into the night and skipping sleep.

What, you may ask, can be keeping me so busy when I only teach for 3 hours per week? Wow - makes me feel like I can't manage my time well putting it that way! But then we should keep in mind that I also have a research project going on (the one I stared in Cape Town) - and a masters student to manage who is working on that data. I'm also leading a journal club with faculty and grad students reading about my research area. Then there is my committee work. I'm in charge of the women in physics committee, and am working on taking charge of the service course committee which fortunately has been lead so far by a senior faculty member while I get situated. I was hired to take charge of service course (large introductory course) reform, so this is a very important committee.

This course reform work is what is taking the bulk of my time lately. A week after Thanksgiving I went to Illinois and Indiana to visit two schools who have done course reform work we'd like to borrow from. That was a very hectic but useful trip. Even more exciting than that is the classroom remodel work that is going on. The public classrooms in our building are being remodeled and I have been collecting information and going to meetings to contribute to those plans. We're also interested in making a private classroom just for us out of some under-used space in our building. That required talking to the foundation about raising private funds. It looks like all of this is coming together which is very exciting!

Then there was the decisions about switching to the new text book, which I was in charge of - meeting with the publishers was really annoying.

And teaching only 3 hours per week does not take into account that I have 4 TAs to train and about 250 students who all have individual needs and issues. Then there's preparing for teaching the next term. That took a lot of time before the holidays because I only had 4 days where the person I'm team teaching with and I could work together on it.

I'm probably forgetting various and sundry things I did, but you get the picture... I'm trying to get caught up over the holidays so I can have a less stressed quarter when school starts back Jan 7th. I don't want to loose the free-spirit I cultivated this summer!