Frequent flier miles

We all know that we are supposed to be interested and up to date on current affairs and what is going on in the rest of the world right now. It’s one of the reasons that www.cnn.com goes to the international edition when I bring it up on my computer.

I have read articles about elections in Africa and the tensions in the Middle East, but sometimes I really disappoint myself. Take Friday night. The two lead articles that came up were about the mine explosions in China and a new movie starring George Clooney that is about frequent flier miles.

Guess which one I did not read.

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In other news – only seven more days left in the semester and I don’t teach on two of those days! It boils down to seven hours of lecture but about a billion and six hours of grading and exam prep left. Do you think they would notice if I didn’t grade anything else in the semester? Probably.

Editor’s note – this was supposed to be posted on Sunday. Forgot to press that upload button.

My self worth is not tied to the number of students who sign up for my classes

(Originally, I wasn’t going to post this. It was a “private diary” type of post and maybe TMI. But after reading the story on CNN, I decided that it actually wasn’t that bad.)

That is my mantra this time of year – during preregistration and registration. I used to keep a close eye on the preregistration numbers and would get a secret, naughty thrill when I saw that my classes were more popular than my colleagues. No matter that physics or the genetics lab was being offered at the same time as their sections. Ask me any time during advising and I could tell you within one student what the preregistration numbers were.

I would tell my colleagues that I was just concerned about student distributions or if we had enough people to cover all of the labs or if we needed to offer an overload section. But in reality, it made me feel good to know that my classes were filling up first.

Now that I’m no longer the new kid on the block (even if the new, young prof teaches a different area of chemistry), the glamour is gone. My classes fill up at the same rate as everyone else’s. I tell myself that I check the pre-enrollment numbers only to make sure that we’ll have enough students to offer a class and keep our adjunct. But in reality it does sting a little bit.

But then I read this story on CNN about defriending and your “digital ego.”

Experts say rejection on social networks can hurt worse than an in-person snub because people are usually more polite face-to-face than they are online.

After reading this, I decided that it was OK that I feel bad about the registration numbers. I don’t have a digital ego. I don’t know how many friends I have on Facebook and if people defriended me, I would only wonder why they friended me in the first place. (Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone. If you’re reading this, then yes, I would be quite upset if you defriended me.) So my “real life” ego has to make up for the lack of digital ego.

But I’m getting over it. Now that I’m older and wiser(?), I check the numbers and actually get excited when I see that my lab has fewer people in it – LESS GRADING!

Where’s the Chemistry?

I just realized, I haven’t had anything about chemistry up here in quite a long time.

I’m having a “crisis of faith”; my faith in the concept of nuclear spin that is. We all know that electrons have spin. And they have up spins and down spins. When two electrons with opposite spin meet up, they pair up and the result is, nine months later, a bond. Electron spin I am OK with.

Just like electrons, nuclei of atoms also have spin. Two nuclei don’t meet up and make bonds, that’s the electrons’ job. My problem is with this picture:

http://www.chem.ucalgary.ca/courses/351/Carey/Ch13/ch13-nmr-1.html

When there isn’t a magnetic field, the nuclear spins are pointing in all directions, willy nilly. But as soon as you apply the magnetic field, the nuclei have to pick a direction. Some point up and some point down. HOW DO THEY DECIDE?? Are the nuclei actually spinning in their nest of electrons and some spin clockwise and others counterclockwise? Or is it something more fundamental and to understand you have to do quantum mechanics?

These are the questions that are plaguing me right now.

(As I go to post this, I just realized that I don’t have a chemistry tag. Pathetic.)

I want it, I want it!!

If you know me, you know I’ve been jonesing for an iPhone. I keep putting off the purchase, rationalizing it with things like:

• I still have months on my cell contract (no longer true)
• I’m cheap. (I bought one for Husband at Christmas and I KNOW how much it is!)
• Stop being so materialistic. I don’t NEED it, I just WANT it.
• It’s a prize for tenure. (I know, it’s getting close, but still something to look forward to!)

But with as hectic as my schedule has been these past weeks, I haven’t been able to keep track of all of my appointments. A handy pocket calendar that also makes phone calls and can surf the internet during boring faculty things is mighty compelling.

And today, a colleague said “How about an iTouch? It’s cheaper and does just as much.”

Hmmmm…. Maybe an iTouch is a good compromise. It doesn’t have a camera true, but the only thing I use the camera on my cell phone for anyway is to take pictures of books in the book store so I can check them out from the library later. (See the second bullet above.) So I won’t be able to text on it, but the only time I text anyway is when I’m at a conference.

So what do you think? iPhone or iTouch?

Best mom ever

A big public apology to my mom, who is the most understanding, wonderful and caring mom ever.

I was supposed to go home to visit for a couple of day over my Spring Break and BOY HOWDY how I was looking forward to it. It is warm in TX! It is cold and rainy and snowy in Michigan. I was going to take my bathing suit and come back with a tan. I was going to sleep in and get caught up on grading. I was going to face my fears and see some high school friends. I was going to start uncovering all of those memories that I spent 15 years trying so hard to forget. High school was difficult for me, but I don’t think it was as bad as I have spent the last 5 years thinking. Either that, or we’ve all grown up a little bit and are now willing to put things behind us and become friends again with the people that we are now. We can laugh and joke about those characters we knew “way back then” and pretend that they weren’t us.

But then the cat got sick.

I have been so stressed out because the thought of jetting off to TX and leaving Husband to take care of him while he had to write two grant proposals was just too much. Plus the cytology reports came back and it was not good news. Instead of lymphoma, there was proteinaceous material “suggestive of carcinoma.” And our vet thinks it is pretty aggressive because of the speed in which everything is happening.

We could have taken the cat to the MSU oncology department and pursued chemo and more aggressive options, but I just couldn’t do it. After a second trip to the vet, we made the decision not to put him to sleep last Friday. They removed another 150 mL of fluid from his chest cavity and we brought him home. So I canceled my trip to TX to stay with my cat and make sure that he is OK, or at least not in pain. He doesn’t have months, he has weeks or days.

I’m still upset and prone to sudden tears, but it doesn’t have the intensity that it used to. I used to be upset because I thought I wasn’t going to get to say goodbye when he goes. It is really important to me to be there for him. He has trusted me to feed him and keep him safe for his entire life and I’m not going to give up my responsibility now. It’s a horrible decision to have to make, but I wouldn’t feel good about myself delegating it to someone else, even Husband.

For the moment, he sleeps a lot. When he purrs, he has more trouble breathing, so I try not to get him too worked up. I sit with him and work on the computer or read. So for now, I am at home in the horrible, rainy weather sitting with my Monster and waiting for the time to say goodbye.