clickity clickity click

That’s the sound of Erron blogging behind me.  It makes me feel somewhat guilty for not putting anything up new myself, so here’s something for you.

Last Saturday I attended a volunteer orientation session at the Museum of Science and Industry.  Yeah, it’s the biggest and best science museum in north america and I am going to volunteer there.  Why?  Well, for one, when we took the kids there it was just a lot of fun and I appreciate the place.  They have a whole permanent exhibit dedicated to genetics, how awesome is that?  So I figured I have all this genetics skill and teaching skill and if I am going to volunteer any of my time I may as well do something that uses what I am good at instead of just doing something to pass the time, so maybe this will be a good use of my mad skillz.  Why volunteer though?  Partly to give something of myself to the community, to feel good about being selfless and useful, partly because those ‘merkins is so dumb they need a science education and if I can make a couple kids think maybe they will be interested in science instead of whatever crap passes for science in the public education system, and partly because it will look really good on things like resumes and applications for reappointment or promotion.  It’s the service component of the academic threesome, “Teaching, Scholarship and Service”.  Because the volunteer coordinator has been away this week I have to wait until tomorrow to discuss what I might do and when I might start.

Oh, another bonus, free parking which includes when we go as a family, shnawesome!

If this sounds like it makes no sense just read it over again… slowly… and add in any letters, words or sentences which are needed to make this not just a blog post, but a literary masterpiece, because it’s too late to proof the thing and Erron just left to go to bed and I am doing the same.

Seeing Someone

So I met this girl online, turns out we have a lot in common.  She has 3 kids, just like me.  She lives really close by and the best part is, she’s HOT!  She has a blog too, you can read it at erron.wordpress.com

Where do we go from here?

I have been off from teaching for just about a month now.  Our plans to come back and visit have been off and on and things are just hard.  Elijah is struggling/ we are struggling with him to try and get him potty trained, try and work on his ability to express himself more with words and less with agression and he thrives on routine so an extended trip may just destroy any progress we are making.  It is also easy to just stay home, play in the yard and not think about the summer passing me by.  We thought out a trip yesterday which would have us driving for 8 days out of 15, spending 4 non-driving in Edmonton and 3 non-driving in Sask.  This would give us minimal away from home time, but we would be in the van longer than we would actually be visiting with anyone so we aren’t the most excited about that plan either.  Oh what to do, what to do.  Erron has been having migraines since about the time Kim left a month ago and after trying 2 different drugs they don’t seem to be working very well so she is getting a CT scan done next week.  We won’t be finalizing any plans until then I guess.

Today we went to a city beach called Rainbow Beach.  It was nice enough, a cooler day, only about 22 and the beach was pretty deserted.  The sand wasn’t as nice as the time we drove twice as far to the Indiana Dunes, so we might go back to Indiana next time (if there is a next time).  Elijah once again just ran like crazy and neither he nor Petra wanted to go into the water, so it’s just not as fun eating sand covered food and chasing them down as we could be having doing something else.  Elijah ran after a bank of seagulls and beyond and Erron went after him, but since her head hurt she just walked and her ran for a good 10 minutes down the beach (luckily pretty deserted so I could see him).  Looking at google earth, he probably ran 400-500m in sand so was pretty damn tired by the time Erron got to him.  She made him walk back and he was a bit slowed down, but that kid is like a dog at the off-leash area, he could just run like wild until he drops.  Petra liked feeding her sand covered pretzels to the gulls and tried to catch them, but she never strays more than a stone’s throw away and usually much less than that.  Why couldn’t Elijah just get a bit of a sense of fear instead of being fearless?

quick update

Since it’s the kids’ 3rd birthday I don’t have time to grumble but the short story is I didn’t get the job offer, they already offered it to someone else.  A little disappointed, but I have a job here next year so I am not panicked about it.

Hmmm…

I went in to the office today to pick up my mail (a bound copy of my thesis) and my W-2 (american t4 slip).  On my phone was a message from the science chair at MRC.  She didn’t give anything away, she just asked me to call her back and gave her number.  The message was from Wednesday, which is only 4 business days after their interviews ended last Thursday.  I am trying not to read it either way since I’ll call her back tomorrow morning but I imagine that not enough time has passed for it to be bad news.  If they had given the offer to someone else they probably would wait until they accepted to tell everyone else which would probably take a week, so maybe they just want more information, or maybe there is a job offer, tomorrow we shall see.

Post Interview Musings

Tuesday was a long morning, with the hour difference I managed to only sleep in until 7:30 before my body decided that was the normal time to get up. I slowly got ready and enjoyed drank that world famous hotel-room coffee. Why do they even tease you with a coffee maker that makes weaker coffee than Juan Valdez’s pee? I went through my lecture notes, made a few changes, went through them again while actually speaking through and explaining them (something I of course don’t do when actually teaching since it takes more time than I have). I was getting antsy for my 2:00 interview so by 1:10 I walked from the dorms over to the campus and gave myself a tour. They had a Tim Horton’s inside which was nice, not so much because I needed coffee, but because I use coffee as a tool when teaching. It is my way of killing a few seconds in between slides or catching my breath or giving students a bit extra time to write stuff down method. I take a sip and then continue, this is easier for me than just standing there silently shuffling my feet, at least I’m doing something. So I got my coffee and went through the bookstore and looked down a few halls and got to the science office 10 minutes early. The office assistant was nice and recognized me immediately (who else but the interviewee would walk in dressed in a suit and tie?) and we made smalltalk for a few minutes. She was very nice and she was the one who made sure I had fruit, bread, milk, granola bars, cereal and a few other things stocked in my room since she knew I was flying in on the long weekend Monday and might not manage to find a place to eat. I a few of the faculty while waiting as they processed to the conference room but I waited outside until 2:00 so they could have a few minutes before to make sure everyone knew the plan (I’m assuming). When I got into the board room I was introduced to everyone and sat down to be told the plan. The chair of the department asked me one question “Tell us about yourself and why you think you’re a good candidate for this position” and then after telling them my academic-life story we made our way to the classroom for my mock lecture. I think the lecture went well, they asked some questions after the half hour that were the type a student might ask and then we made our way back to the conference room (which was in another building btw). Back in the interview room there were the standard college-type interview questions: Tell us about a difficult person (student) you have had to deal with and what did you do? If you were teaching a multi-section class and your midterm average was significantly lower than the other one what would you do? How do you deal with change (since they are in the middle of the big change of starting to offer BSc degrees)? How would your supervisor describe you? What do you think is the greatest challenge to teaching today? When was the last time you tried a new technique in your teaching and how did it work out? What do you feel is a good balance between teaching and research (I knew the desired answer for this one as I had read it in faculty minutes I found online from 2 years ago)? A few other questions too that I can’t really remember right now. Overall I think I did good, I wasn’t stumped by any questions and I could get a good vibe every so often as someone would nod their head in agreement to what I was saying. After their questions was the “Do you have any questions?” part which is a good way to show your interest in the job and a bit of what you know about them and I had done my research so I think that went well too, even though it is hard to remember the things you’ve thought about as questions when you are on the spot.

After the interview I was given a tour of the labs and then the campus by another Biology faculty who wasn’t at the interview and made small talk as we walked around. The campus is really nice and has a great recreation facility, it would be sweet to be able to take Elijah on their rock climbing wall as he gets older. After about 40 minutes of tour I was brought back to wait a few minutes in the science office while the chair packed up so she could take me to dinner. At this point I noticed that they had a sheet posted on the wall with the listed interviewees and times (no, I didn’t recognize any of their names). She then took me to Earl’s for supper and two of the other biologists from the interview showed up soon after. We ate dinner and made a bit less formal talk. Subjects ranged from the US healthcare system to Stalmach and Klein and the new Ben Stein movie on Intelligent Design. At one point when we all discussed our dislike of Klein it was mentioned that he is actually an endowed chair of communications at mount royal and the chair said something along the lines of,”Don’t tell Kyle that, we want him to come here remember?” I’m sure it doesn’t mean I’m the one, but I think it is a good hint that I am competent enough that they haven’t written me off already. After dinner I was driven back to the dorms by the chair, total time from start of interview to drop off was 4.5 hours.

The goodish news? I saw their interview schedule and I was the first interviewee. Also, the other 3 interviews they are doing all happened today (Thursday). From the timing of their interviews they get 3 hours between each one, and I am guessing they aren’t all going for dinner after, so I probably got a chance to get personally known more than those people will. Also, I figure that doing 3 in a day will be hard to discriminate them and not suffer interview-fatigue compared to my fresh interview 2 days prior.

That night I google-mapped the nearest TD bank since we have some cheques that got sent to us after the move and this was my first opportunity to deposit them. Without a car it seemed far to walk 3km to the bank, but I figured I didn’t have much else to do, so why not? Well, the walk there didn’t go so badly as I had the sun and mountains to tell me which direction I was walking, even when the roads would slowly change angles. The way back however it was already dark and I stayed on one road too long and managed to get myself nicely lost. In my dress shoes I walked something like 9 or 10 km and my feet were hurting when I got TO the bank, so by the time I got to the dorm my legs were just dead getting up the stairs. Who knew runners were so much better at keeping your feet happy?

I don’t know if it was the walk or what but I couldn’t get to sleep until 2, which was unfortunate since I had to be up by 5:30 for my cab ride to the airport.  I got up, packed up and headed out by 6 to be at the airport in plenty of time for my 8:30 flight.  All went well the way back, no lost passports or anything and I was “home” in Chicago by 1:00 on Wednesday.  A busy 2 days for sure but hopefully it will be well worth it.

Home sweet home

Coming to you from Canada, it’s…me!  After 9 months away I am on the Mount Royal campus.  I’ve managed to track down the nearest Tim’s and get myself a meaty bowl of chili and an iced cap, yum!

Here’s a tip for anyone who ever goes across an international boundary while leaving their family behind, KEEP HOLD OF YOUR PASSPORT!  Apparently while walking onto the plane I had my passport in hand with my boarding pass and half an hour into the flight I found my boarding pass on the floor under my seat, weren’t they in my coat pocket?  I check the pocket, and the other pocket, and the other pocket, and my laptop bag, and my seatback magazine thing, and my pant pockets… no passport.  I figure it must be on the floor so I try to wiggle nochalantly in my seat to look under it, no passport.  I take out my phone and try to take a picture under the seat, no passport to be seen.  So it went another 3 or 4 times through the 4 hour flight, looking in each place over and over again.  Finally I just figured it might have slid forward or back and when we landed I would get up and really have a look and maybe ask the people in front of and behind me to look.  I was trying not to panic but inside, I was a bit panicked.  As we touched down I get tapped on the shoulder from the guy behind me,”Did you drop your passport?”  I said I think so and he got it from the guy behind him, I think it slid back like 3 rows during takeoff, yikes…
So my interview is tomorrow at 2 so tonight I get to go through my mock lecture and polish it up and make sure I can teach the teachers.  That means I should probably turn off the TV, but I don’t think I’ve watched a sitcom in like 8 months so it was kinda fun to have that going in the background.  How I met your mother = funny show btw.

Cowtown

I bought my ticket last night.  I’ll be arriving in Calgary at 4:30 pm on Monday and leaving at 8:30 am on Wednesday.  Nearly $1700 for a day and a half, I feel guilty about the cost, but that’s how much a quick turn around flight like that costs, good thing they’re paying me back.  I can’t believe I’ve been out of the country for 9 months, I think it will feel like a relief to be back even with all the stress of the interview.  I still have a lecture to write for there and 2 exams to write/mark here and about 100 pages of student papers to read…  looks like it will be a long week ahead.

A place to vent?

Hey everyone, this is another blog, because as much fun as it is to comment on your blogs sometimes I have things to get out too that I don’t want the whole world to easily find. That said, here is what is weighing heavily on me right now…

Life here in the windy city is good, I like my classes, I like my coworkers, our house is nice and day to day life is good. The problem is, I don’t think I like it here. I am just working on a temp-visa and it’s just a bit of a constant nagging feeling in the back of your head that I’m only here and allowed to work until someone decides otherwise. My visa would probably expire if I lost my job, which I normally wouldn’t worry about except I am only here on a 2-year contract and year 1 is almost up. The job I applied for was a tenure-track position, which means I would have a contract which gets renewed. When they offered me the job they had changed it to a non-tenure track position because they weren’t sure enough of how I would fit in. This means next year I will be applying for my job again and so will other people, and if someone better comes along I’m out. Even though I do good work, and I think I am liked it is a bit of a worry that if I don’t get rehired we’re pretty much screwed. There’s other things to be less than thrilled about, like the fact that social programs are lacking and health care (if any of us does get sick) would be costly. Sure we have insurance through work, but there are still co-pay amounts and yearly maximums. A big thing, and one that is coming sooner than I would like to think, is the kids’ education. Apparently the public school system here is terrible, and we have that opinion from friends through church who work as higher-ups trying to fix the public school system here. The option then for an education you would expect to get from any school in a small town back home is private school which will run you about 5000 per year and going up to about 10000 per year for high school. Doing the math for 3 kids it would bankrupt us to get them an average education, way to live the american dream I guess. Also, I don’t think I could see myself teaching here long-term, to get tenure you need to teach, publish, and also be a good philosophical match, and I don’t think I am dutch enough or reformed enough to make the tenure process an easy one.

Options then? Wait out the second year and then apply both here and elsewhere? I think we would prefer to move back if I can find something good, and maybe my experience here will help me do that. It has become apparent to us that even though our family unit has eachother, we do need outside interaction too. The lack of friends or family does make you feel a bit empty despite usually not having any time that you could dedicate to those other relationships. A great scenario would be to move to BC to be close to the grandparents, my brother is already contemplating moving out there too. Of course I can’t really bank on the fact that I could find something there. Klein-land north would be good to be close to all of you again, but there aren’t a lot of options for places to apply, so breath-holding might not be advised. There’s also a less-perfect, but still decent option in the Chinook-lands, we have some family there and it is a drivable distance to visit those people we miss… what do you call them again? It’s been so long…. oh yeah, friends.

So, to the news. I applied to two places a few months ago, one in the valleys of lotus-land and one on the royal mountain of cowtown. Those reefer-madness dudes emailed me back a few weeks later to say that they didn’t get the budget money to hire this year and they would be reposting the position next year, the cowpokes I didn’t hear back from so I figured that was a bust too. Of course, things happen when you aren’t expecting it and they have now contacted me for an interview. I will be flying down on the 19th and back on the 21st with some interviewing / mock-teaching on the 20th. As luck would have it our classes here end the week before so I can slip away with nobody noticing which means they won’t know I’m looking and suffer some kind of jealous rage.

Your thoughts of course go to the what-ifs, if I do get it I am putting the people here in a tough spot to fill my place in 3 months with someone good, they are going to offer a course next year that I proposed and I also have accepted a student to do a research project with me. There’s some guilt if that does come to pass that I just ditch them. There’s the stress that another huge move would have on our family, it is excruciating to move this far, be living in a packed up mess for months with little ones around. I don’t want to even count how much we will have lost on moving expenses, currency exchanges and real estate comissions. That is if we can even sell our place which would be sold for less than we bought it 8 months ago and we would probably have to cut that even more to get the place sold in less than a year. The market here really really sucks and it is the worst time to sell. What’s that saying? If you don’t get killed breaking eggs you’ll get a stronger omelet?

That’s the main thing for now, I just needed to have a friendly eye/ear to share with.