New social media is dead; the internet is dead

Not too long ago, a friend of mine commented on how blogging and facebook are dead. I echo that sentiment. If I spend more than 10 minutes online, it is probably because I am looking at the selection of motorcycles on motors.ebay.com. I am reminded of the following commercial from 2002. Being from that long ago and referencing the state of the internet (Facebook had yet to appear), the commercial is as pertinent as ever.




Rather than updating this blog or my facebook status, I can now be found theorizing about human behavior and eating sardines in my coat closet.

Facial Aversion

Everyone remembers their mom telling them to not stare at somebody. Maybe it was the kid in the wheelchair, the lady who had suffered a stroke, or maybe some really creepy homeless dude.
Working in at a large public institution, I get to see this ingrained behavior play out on a day to day basis. Everyone tries to strike a balance between intrigue and apathy, but they go about it in different ways. Some, like myself are balancers. We allow ourselves to look for a moment if we 'balance' that look with another at a different person either beside them or in the other direction. Other people are peripheral-peekers. They use their peripheral vision to peek from under their ballcaps, behind their dark glasses, or even from a ducked head... hoping to catch a glance... they don't care how long they stare because it is only a partial stare. There are the 'you caught me's' who chance to stare until caught at which point they seek the comfort of looking at the ground until they are safely out of range of the individual. There are others, but I'll reserve that for the comment section (please share) or another post. I need to get to the more important issue of the types of people who attract our stares.
Today I noticed that I have facial aversion to different groups or types of people, so I assume that others do too. For example, I don't allow myself to look at extremely pretty or extremely ugly women. I think that it helps them not think that I am creepy. I don't look at the bodies of the physically disabled, but I will look directly into their eyes. I avoid looking at people in immodest clothing, even when I could look into their eyes and avoid their bodies. I never look up in a stairwell in case someone is wearing a miniskirt, and I never look down in a stairwell in case someone is wearing an open blouse or otherwise revealing their cleavage. I will often avoid eye contact with groups of non-white students in case they think that the 'bald white guy' is singling them out. I never look at a women if she is walking alone for fear that she thinks I am going to follow her or treat her as an object of lust.
Alternatively, I don't have the facial aversion problem with most non-aggressive looking men. I generally try to smile at people, but find myself more often than not, simply looking down or away. It just seems easier.

New Faculty Orientation

Two years ago, I was unprepared for classes, working out of an office without furniture, getting a foreclosed house ready for my family, and worrying about life in SoCal. I have learned a lot over the past two years about my school, being a professional academic, living in a bankrupt state, and what I would tell others who were in my shoes. This week, I presented a little talk on being a new faculty member to this year's new faculty recruits. As I spoke, I realized that teaching is less important to me than the other stuff that I do. Mainly, I know that I will get my teaching done well, but it is easy to let other stuff slide, like grant applications, revising (my own) research papers quickly, doing the mindless paperwork, and thinking a couple of years ahead. It was a nice prompt to encourage a little self-reflection about what to do with my time.

So, what makes me different today from two years ago? I guess everything has resolved itself except for being prepared for classes. Why write a syllabus until an hour before class?

Why a motorcycle will never kill me

I have been drooling over a motorcycle for approximately 700 years. On the top of my list are the Triumph Scrambler, the BMW F650, and the Ducati GT1000. My wife has been longing for a dog in a similar manner. I hate dogs and she hates thinking that I will die in a motorcycle accident. A couple of months ago I put my foot down and said, "if you get a dog, I'm getting a bike." She actually understood that I was serious.

After today, I know a motorcycle won't kill me. it will be too many gulab jamun. These little warm, sweet, donut-like Indian treats will be the death of me. That, and a number of other foods that I simply refuse to give up. I have a serious addiction to saturated fat, sugar, and cheeses. My veins and arteries are likely more clogged than the freeways here in SoCal.

... the mice will play.

The cat left and took two of the kittens. What should you expect from the mice? - A seriously crazy long day full of fun and adventure.

In chronological order:
1. get up, eat breakfast, pack the car
2. take mom and sisters to the airport in OC
3. ride to the car mega mart and look at mini coopers
4. ride to the gas station for a soda and candy
5. ride to dad's work
6. play video games on the computer while dad tries to work
7. ride scooter around campus while dad has an impromptu meeting
8. go to Ruby's for lunch (eat french fries with meal)
9. play video games while dad tries to work
9.5 eat some candy, gum, and other generally unwelcome items
10. go to class when I would normally be going to bed (7pm class start time)
11. play ipod games while dad holds a two hour class
12 get out of class in time to quickly pack up and
13. ride to Disneyland to watch the fireworks from the top floor of the parking garage
14. ride to Arby's for a sandwich (only to find that they had cleaned their shake machine)
15. ride to McDonalds for an ice cream cone
16. fall asleep in the car (sometime around 10:45pm)

What kid wouldn't have loved that day? I just hope that he can remember.
I will never forget how many sincere thank you's I heard.

Space or no space

I am a little confused. Normally I would up and do everything that Steven Hawking says - because, you know, he is the smartest person with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ever to wheel the earth. BUT, it seems like he is asking too much from us. First he says not to go look for aliens and then he says we must abandon Earth. Hasn't he ever watched Star Trek? All planets that are inhabitable by humans already have some humanoid life form on them. Seriously, if this is the smartest guy we've got we are all doomed.

Academic Poetry pt. 2

Another installment from yesterday's poetry session.

Forms
By JT (7/19/10 10:25pm)

Eform solutions
Don’t work on Macs
Like almost everything else

Paper forms
Last resort
A relic

Who remembers where they are?
I’ve been here 4 years
A long time

Form in hand
Find the account
Copy the number

Don’t use that reason
It’s not approved
Call it this

Sign and date on the line
Cross the t’s
Dot the i’s

Place in folder
Campus mail
Meet the deadline

It’s a legal document
To be filed
In the cave of other files

Files and forms
Moldering in boxes
Mitigating legal disaster

Rogue accountants
From the state
Check dates

Academic Poetry

I have a difficult time calming down after class. I believe that teaching is a performance art. As such it is difficult to stop when the class ends or the show is over.

Tonight, this energy was channeled into poetry. My first poem in at least 15 years.

The in between place
By JT (7/19/10 9:41pm)

There is a black hole
somewhere between my office
and where papers need to go.

I’ll look for it.
When I find it
you won’t hear from me again.

That is the nature of black holes.

Hopefully I will find it.
If not, we will still believe it is there.
Unseen but powerful.

That is the nature of man,
to believe the unseen.

That is not science.

I am a scientist.
not an administrator.

Change

I have decided to not go pRivate, bUt raTher to switcH to a mature content warning - this blog contains 'Adult Content.' :)

Next up - the bowtie professor's audition for "so you want to be a porn star?" Think bald, fat, white, nerdy, mormon PhD... nevermind.

The adult content warning made me do it.

Apology

I understand that I hurt someone's feeling with one of my last blog posts. I apologize. I didn't think that my opinion was important enough to you to change how you feel about yourself or others. My opinion shouldn't do that anyway. Nevertheless, I am sorry to have caused you discomfort.

I didn't even know that people really read my blog (besides the very few of you who make occasional comments). This is a major problem of social media. I don't know who reads my blog and I don't care. I believe that I say truthful things, but you are free to disagree. You are even free to make a comment in the comment section without my moderation. I don't have a vendetta against anyone specific in this blog - it is my open journal to the world about the things that make me tick. Occasionally, I will work out problems here, or grapple with things that I fail to understand. I have invited you into my world through my willingness to be open.
This openness has rightly caused some concern for my spouse. Please do not take the opinions represented here as hers. She is so good that she won't even read this blog. This was to be an anonymous blog for my family while I was away in Oregon. Then I started using it to track stories that I wanted to remember for class. The inclusion of my housing pictures early on blew my cover. It has served its purpose well, to enable to me write the occasional journal entry and document my life and thoughts. I am a weird dude- I'll leave it at that.

I completely agree with something that my grandfather used to say: "the person with the most power in a relationship is the one who cares least." I am sorry, I thought that you had the power.

In a few weeks, I will change this to a private blog. Not that it matters... I rarely post and nobody really knows what I'm talking about anyway. Why should they, I'm really not that important.
Best,
The Bowtie Professor

Victory and Gratitude

Last semester I worked a double shift teaching and advising while trying to comprehensively re-organize the department's course offerings and work schedule. The spring semester was free of teaching and full of writing. I am very grateful to have so much done towards tenure. I also have wonderful co-authors who are patient and hardworking. I counted the accomplishments of the past year a genuine success with a footnote - we had yet to receive approval for the revised course scheduling and workload... until last week.
For nearly 30 years, no one had stopped to consider if we were teaching the right classes at the right times or if we were spinning our wheels teaching 4 classes per semester. A simple logical solution (prompted by a budget crisis and subsequent furlough) was to reorganize and do some mind-numbing data work. The result is that our new workload is 3 classes per semester, with dedicated research time in our work time allocation. The obvious trade off is that the classes are slightly larger, but the difference between 50 and 65 students in a class is so small that no one is disadvantaged. Our department is one of the most prominent on campus and will likely serve as a model to transform workloads throughout the college.
So, on gratitude... I am extremely blessed. For once, a logical solution worked its way to approval in a large highly bureaucratic university. I am grateful for the bursts of writing accomplishment interspersed with lots of family time. I am grateful for 90% of a salary when I could be unemployed. I am grateful for those who have given us a nice place to land in case of emergencies. And as much as I complain about the past, I am grateful for those who have given me the support and tools to get where I am. Life is good.

There has to be a country song in there somewhere

Among the most odd stories I have ever read is this one. It could have been a weird/sad enough to have your caulk gun robbery stopped by a flying plastic trash can with a subsequent retreat to your mother's mobile home where you currently live. But as fate would have it, it gets weirder... he was robbing the gas station to buy crack to smoke with the transgendered prostitute he picked up for the night. Where is a good country song writer when you need one?

Vindication

Being able to regularly return to a place where you used to live is a wonderful experience.
Since returning to my wife's hometown for a brief vacation, we have met with family and friends (and family-friends). I had forgotten how nice it is to catch up on old gossip and funny circumstances.
Last night I had the pleasure of meeting with some of my former coworkers (and really good friends). Inevitably, the conversation drifted to how we all left the business for less dramatic pastures. As they told their stories, I felt less and less like I needed to apologize for the things that my former employer blamed me for*. I have been struggling with how to let him know that I have forgiven him and ask him for his forgiveness for whatever he blames me for. The struggle is that I truly believe my only error was to tell him the truth. Anyway, as we shared our stories, each of my friends had an analogous story to mine, and with one being strikingly similar. I now have 7 data points in support of my hypothesis. Here it is... after years of teaching master's degree seeking students, he has fallen into a pattern of enjoying the first year of training each new mind. As time progresses and the 'students' gain confidence and ability, they start becoming a problem for his ego. He is no longer the star, but an accessory to their self-motivation and work. By 18 months, he starts changing his mind about what he wants, who is in charge, and ultimately how business is done in the office. By two years, he wants them gone. Up until now this pattern has worked sufficiently well for his business because replacements came every season. His last hire is finally working for the salary he has been given for years and has out managed his employees - maybe it would be better to say he managed them out of employment. Now there are two bosses and two employees. Sweet business model, huh?

*Apparently even years after my departure, I am being blamed for computers not working (apparently I am a master hacker ), data disappearing, research not turning out properly, and the like.

There is a much better case to be made than this one

While on vacation in NM, I get to read a number of periodicals that I normally don't. They include Newsweek, Time, and National Geographic. I used to read the Economist, but that was my last experience with a periodical that I actually paid for.

This week, I read an article about marriage that really made me think. Mostly I think that there is a much better case to be made both for and against marriage than the authors make. Nevertheless, it forced me to reconsider some of my previously held assumptions about the nature of marriage in today's world. If the article is correct and this is all that marriage has to offer, I totally understand the appeal of a four year monogamous stint followed by another four year monogamous stint, continuing in perpetuity until your smelly, wrinkly physique no longer could attract another semi-mate and you die a cold lonely death in a corn field.

Why Facebook kills blogs

I have three sources of information that I use nearly everyday. First is KPCC. KPCC is the LA area's National Public Radio station. I should be a member, but really enjoy being a free-rider because it makes my inner homo-economicus proud. The second is really a set of media outlets (Reuters, AP, LATimes, FT.com, BBC News, etc.) with typical news stories that I connect to via my third source - the Drudge Report headlines. Each of these has different levels of depth to their stories. Sometimes all I really need to know is the Drudge headline. Other times, I want the complete multifaceted story. For example there was a little story on how the person who stole Einstein's brain helped our understanding of intelligence, but not in the way they envisioned.

Social networking has these same levels of depth. Blogging is like NPR - you get to see the inner workings of the author's mind. Facebook is like the traditional media outlets with a variety of status updates, notes, memos, links, likes, and friend networks. Twitter is the Drudge Report headlines of all social media. If you can't say it in less than 140 characters, you can't say it.

Facebook is killing blogging because it is so much easier to allow minimal intrusions into your life, but not so minimal as tweeting. Most often I find myself posting stories to facebook when I should really explain them here. For example, this story which is probably more pertinent to this blog than I want to admit.

Reading and Writing (pt. 2)

Reading helps writing, but I don't know why. My dissertation adviser suggested that I relax and read when I was having a hard time writing. He said that it helped you write because you were watching the story unfold page after page, much like I had to do while writing my 'book.'
I find that reading sparks my creativity, not necessarily my work writing. Unfortunately, I don't want to write what I have to write for tenure (academic journal articles). Rather, I have started to write a play and a memoir. In these, I can see the story unfold. I find them meaningful. I want to write them. My other work, while meaningful, has little chance to ever be read. Maybe I just tricked you into reading the abstract. Can you see how a memoir would be more fun?

Reading and Writing

Both of you who routinely read my blog probably recognize the pattern - I blog in bursts. Get ready for a string of posts. Tonight's installment is long overdue.
When I read, I become really focused. I have the tendency to start a book and finish it in a couple of hours. While my reading log looks nothing like my reading hero's, I've read a lot lately - It helps my writing. Most recently I read Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner." My wife noted that most of the people she knows who did not like the book were male. She attributes it to the forced sodomy scene. While that was not a comfortable thing to read, I disagree. The hardest part of the book was to see the unrequitted devotion of a true friend to a self-absorbed boy. As I read, I began to relive the bullying I endured in middle school. Then, I began to analyze how I had treated others when my situation reversed in high school. The book is haunting because you suffer for both characters.
Tonight I read each post (in reverse order) from a friend of a friend's blog. It is equally disturbing. In finding herself, she loses something very precious. You can feel her struggle in her words. It will ease over time, which is the ultimate tragedy.

Green guilt

Another story with a guilt theme...

I work with the Environmental Studies Program and am affiliated with the Center for Sustainabilty, so I should be 'green,' right? The other day I was in a late meeting (4:00pm) and knew that if I didn't leave right then, I would be stuck in traffic for well over an hour. I told the committee in the meeting that I needed to leave to beat the rush and a very vocal bike-riding faculty member looked up at me and said "you are the sustainability guy ?!?" Yes, yes, I am. I drive 35 miles each way to work because I can't afford to live in a reasonably sized house (enough for 3 kids) anywhere near the school. I would love to do so, but simply can't. At first I was really hurt, then I felt guilty, now I feel indignant. If he wants to help me be 'green' enough for his standard, he can make my wage livable. I'm just not going to trade having my stay-at-home wife and children happy in a comfortable sized house in a nice neighborhood and great school district far away from school for a tiny house in the ghetto of Orange County with horrible crime and underachieving schools. You can try to 'green guilt' me as much as you want, but it won't work with this, SUCKER!

Oh, yeah... Happy earth week.

Foreclosure story

I listen to KPCC all of the time. (I should have included this disclosure in the guilt post, but I am not a member and really should be.) One night I heard a story about a couple who lost their house to foreclosure and it gave a life to the families who have lost their lives as they lost their houses. Luckily for Stephanie and Bob (the couple in the story), life has gotten much better and they are apparently happy.

This story shook my world, so I wrote the following email to the producer of the story:

"I listened to Stephanie and Bob's story with a guilty heart. I moved my family from New Mexico to the LA area (Inland Empire, Riverside to be precise) in 2008. I took a position at Cal State Fullerton as a professor and we didn't have a lot of money for a house (I had been unemployed for 6 months and we had to 'eat' our down payment). We found an 'affordable' foreclosure in August 2008 for $190,000 and bought it immediately. The really sad part is that it had sold for $435,000 in 2006, and for $385,000 in January of 2008. The house had lost $245,000 since the peak. We invested another $15,000 in remodeling materials (I did the labor) the house over the next year. We didn't particularly like the neighborhood but the house was now only worth about $165,000 and we didn't want to take the loss in a sale, so we decided to rent it out and look for another house in a better neighborhood. We found another repossessed house in a much better neighborhood that sold for $588,000 in 2007 and was now going for $345,000. It lost $243,000 in three years. After some financial wrangling, we will close on this new house sometime next week.

I am sad to hear about Stephanie and Bob's loss - I even feel guilt for taking advantage of these 'deals.' Each house had a family. Whether or not they made bad financial decisions or were the victims of a fraudulent system - they were first and foremost families. So many dreams have been shattered, and so many lives impacted. I hate to feel like 'the bad guy' but my family needs a home to love. If it were not for these crises, I would not have been able to house my family in Southern California on a single assistant professor salary.

I don't know what it all means, but I do feel for those previous owners of my houses. Hopefully something as good will come to them as it did to Stephanie and Bob.

Best,
The BowTie Professor"

They wrote back with a nice comment about my "thoughtful note" - whatever.
I stand by what I said, it is difficult to hear the stories of the families losing their houses and see these 'deals' in purely economic terms.

My mother always talks about how when my dad died, she felt like the mother superior in 'the Sound of Music' saying "when God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window." Whether their fault or not, hopefully those windows are big enough for the familes that had the doors to their houses closed to them.

Guilt

I have an infatuation with guilt. It isn't love, but it is more than a simple friendship- it's definitely not a 'love affair.' With my crazy last couple of weeks, I must have been setting myself up for some guilt-lovin'. A quick recap with the action and corresponding guilt-
1. Action: We moved into a very nice house in a new neighborhood.
- Guilt: We moved away from my sister and her family. I miss them already and feel like I abandoned them.
2. Action: We moved into a house that is twice the size of our old house.
- Guilt: Having twice the house is nice, but feels indulgent. I feel like a kid in a mansion. I have always thought of myself as frugal and minimalist, but this is, like I noted before, indulgent.
3. Action: We moved into a house that has a view of the mountains (Cleveland National Forest).
- Guilt: None. I love being able to see the mountains.
4. Action: We moved into a new congregation for our church.
- Guilt: I feel bad about not being able to adjust to the old congregation. I am an odd person (I know what you are thinking, but it's true - a bowtie wearing professor is the most normal person in the world, but you are probably wrong) and I pride myself on being able to see many perspectives, but I had a hard time fitting in there. I have come to realize that they are all hard working, gospel loving children of God, that I just didn't understand. I feel bad for not meeting them on their level. We also left behind some good people there, who I wish that we could have brought with us.
5. Action: We moved into a house that we repossessed.
- Guilt: This makes our second repo house where some family made a couple of bad choices and ended up losing some part of their life. I am haunted that we now own two repossessed houses simply because of our timing. See more on tomorrow's post.
6. Action: I started eating white flour and sugar again because, 'hey, why not? there is sure a lot of leftover Easter candy that I don't want my kids to eat.'
- Guilt: My body feels like crap and I want more food. Even as I type at 11:00pm, I am eating a smothered chicken enchildada, no wait, two of them.
7. The most important (in)Action: I failed to write my conference paper.
- Guilt: I demand a lot of my students in terms of meeting deadlines. When I was a consultant, I did really well at meeting deadlines with time to spare. I planned this semester knowing that I needed to finish four papers. One is done, another is almost done, one is done in my head (the conference paper), and another needs some major help (I have been working on this one for years now). Tonight I sent an email to the other panelists on my conference panel telling them that the paper would not be ready. I missed my deadline. I failed. Hopefully this thing happens occasionally, and my miss will be but a blip on the radar of a few generally uninterested academics. BUT to me this is devastating. Bring on the guilt

Guilt is a moral imperative for us bald, fat white guys who have written history to our advantage and grown fortunes on the backs of females and minorities. I just wish that my white male genes could take a little break and give up guilt for lent or something.

Dumb movies

My wife left town for the week and I impulsively bought a 46" television. I have watched more movies in the last week than I care to admit. I love the 120hz clear motion picture, which has made even the original Superman look nice. What it can't fix is a horrible plot or poor research. Take for example 2012. The special effects are great but two hours of near death misses doesn't make much of a plot. I was excited to see the G.I. Joe movie and it generally lived up to my expectations. It all started to break down for me near the end of the movie when the base beneath the ice cap is exploding. During the under sea chase, chunks of ice start 'falling' through the water on the vehicles below. When a screen writer doesn't know that ice floats, I can't lend them any respect. Seriously, look at your drink in a restaurant. Idiots.

Housing

So we close on a new house in a couple of days. It was another repo. Similar to our current house which lost $245K in value from the peak of the bubble to our purchase, this house lost $243k. It is a nice house with a lot more space. It backs up to the Cleveland National Forest, has access to trails and open space, and has an association pool and fitness center. The house sits about 50-100 feet off of the Lake Elsinore Fault. We are betting that it won't rupture in the next 10-15 years, approximately how long we plan on being in the house. It is a gamble, but so is leaving the money in the stock market.

When I read this article about the effect of interest rates rising, my heart sunk. The author obviously misses anything more than a short term economic perspective. Take for example this statement "For people putting their homes on the market this spring, rising rates may actually be a good thing." Sure, for some people who were selling their house at the exact right place at the exact right time have benefited from the rush of individuals trying to get the $8000 federal tax relief. The value of their house has been held up because of increased demand and possibly short supply. But with a glut of foreclosed homes, joblessness increasing (or maybe staying stable) - leading to more foreclosed homes, and an increase in mortgage interest rates... all I see is an increased housing supply, reduced demand, fewer sales, and an eventual decrease in housing prices. The author even points out that "It's all about affordability. For every 1 percentage point rise in rates, 300,000 to 400,000 would-be buyers are priced out of the market in a given year...For example, taking out a 30-year mortgage for $300,000 at a rate of 5 percent will cost you about $1,600 a month, not including taxes and insurance. But the same monthly payment at a rate of 6 percent will only get you a loan of $270,000." Guess what, we have done little to reduce the number of foreclosures due to joblessness which means we are not really controlling the supply of houses. This means that market forces will push the value of homes down to what people can afford. if interest rates rise, people can afford less. The person who could have bought the house at $300k with a $1600 per month payment when the rate was 5% can still only get qualified for a $1600 per month payment when the rate is 6%. This means that the house that was once $300k is now only worth $270k. This argument is based on some pretty obvious assumptions about buying power, lending rules, demand being held constant, and supply increasing - but I think that they all hold, at least for California.

This could imply that my new house will lose anther 10-15% of its value in the coming 2 years - also what happened with the house we are in now.

Interdepartmental tension

I went to Chinatown on Friday with my family. I missed a departmental meeting where they were going to finalize the 3-3 load and tie up some loose ends. It ended up being a major fight. They had three items on the agenda and two ended up being tabled for another time when tensions were less high. The flurry of emails after the meeting left a great record of the event and the underlying ire. There was at least one major threat made and a number of vicious glances exchanged.

I ate Chinese food, sheparded my children through downtown LA, and overall had a great family experience. I am grateful for field trips.

Cracked: Student Edition

When I first read Cracked, I didn't really get it. What I did get was that it had cartoons and a funny character, Silvester P. Smythe, the janitor of the magazine. It was banned in my house because my parents understood its subversive nature. Up until a couple of months ago, I still had that original stash from my tween days (before there was such a thing as a tween).

Last week, one of my students cracked. He asked me for a letter of recommendation on a Monday at 10:45am. I was driving home from Yosemite, and I never work on Mondays, unless I have to. By 2:45pm, he had written a reminder letter. Two minutes later, he send a mean email to me about a bad grade that I had given him (later we discovered that this email was wrongly sent to me and was intended for another professor). I replied at 6:45pm asking if he wanted me to write him an email after his mean comments. This set off a a raging tirade of emails. He sent a number of emails to the President of "Elephant U," other high level administrators, and some of the faculty. He skipped right over me and our program director and started raging. We now have the director of graduate studies trying to resolve the problem (babysitting him and us). If he would have just been kind to us and told us what we going on, we could have helped. it is too late now. He has set his sights on the guilty parties. I watch carefully at school in case he shows up. If you don't hear from me again, he is likely the culprit.

The Perils of the Academy - pt. 3

When we moved to CA, it was a huge shock. I had sworn off CA when I left in 1999. R and I came to visit months before I got a job offer here and I remember saying, "it is a nice place to visit occasionally, but I would hate to live here." This post has little to do with California or the real estate market here. It has more to do with professors, their peers, their salary, and housing prices generally.

Professors face an interesting problem in that they don't make enough to live near people with similar standards, interests, and goals as they have. Most of us have been in more school than almost everyone, we thrive on ideas, and we have a unique subculture. Maybe I am a snob, but I like living near people who are thinkers - analytical types. This is not to say that I am an education snob. One of the most amazing people that I ever met was a water well worker. He prided himself on thinking, but had little education. He taught himself physics and was well versed in scripture. He was a renaissance man who commanded respect, but was extremely humble. How I wish that I could be like him. I digress...

In my mind I see professors and their peers in Old Victorian houses, walking with briefcases to work, having summer parties, talking about the books that they read - you know, very aristocratic. I think of "Crossing To Safety" by Wallace Stegner. I see bowties, tweed jackets, coduroy trousers, a house with a library and a claw-foot bathtub. However unrealistic, this is my vision of an academic lifestyle.

On housing... We were warned about our house before we bought it that a drug dealer lived next door. We had looked all over the area and couldn't find anything in our price range that would put us where we wanted to be. We bought a house near my sister (which has been great), on the edge of a not so nice neighborhood, with a great view, next to a drug dealer, at a price that we could afford (if $190K is affordable). It was likely the cheapest house we looked at and an undoubtedly good deal. We remodeled the house and it is nice... inside. The problem is that my neighbors aren't like us, and it is difficult to find comfort here (besides my wonderful sister and her family). It is awkward to get home from school and try to share an experience from work or some useful insight on regulatory strategies with my nice neighbor when she never graduated high school, has 25 teeth, and spends her day caring for her children and grandchildren (all of the same age - more on that upon request). Most of my neighbors struggle to get their children through high school, let alone college. Needless to say, we share little common ground.

We have been looking for a housing upgrade. The places where we want to live start around $350k. Those aren't all that big, and they are still 30 miles away from my school. I could barely make that monthly mortgage payment even with our very substantial down payment. The houses that are cheaper in those nice areas have been snatched up by investors who can pay cash and ask no questions. I am the analytical type - always trying to calculate the best move, but slow to decide. Each time I calculate, I end up with the same conclusion - Strong Sad is adopted.

Maybe all of this isn't true outside of major metropolitan areas, but it is true for me, and that is all that matters right now.

The Perils of the Academy - pt. 2

Another way to hustle some money in the academy is to look at outside jobs. I have the added advantage of wanting to move away from my drug dealer neighbor, so an outside job search comes naturally. [I really love my colleagues at "Elephant U" so leaving is also a difficult proposition.]

Two weeks ago I had a phone interview and was immediately invited for a campus visit. That night my wife and I had a long discussion about living in 'rural-land' and the school/job. When I mentioned the salary range, the discussion was over. I turned down the job interview there. It is much prettier there. It has seasons, snow, an active tourism economy, etc - overall a very nice but secluded place. I found out one day after turning down the interview that it ranked significantly higher than "Elephant U" in the US News and World Report Rankings this year. I still have one job application pending elsewhere, outside of a metropolitan area of ill repute on the east coast. That job is at a good liberal arts college. I will seriously consider it if offered.

This is one of the most difficult processes for me - the choosing, not the interviewing. I love interviewing for jobs and thinking about all of the possibilities in the world. I love the feeling of meeting new people, presenting my research, and interacting with new types of students. When it comes to deciding if I would move, it kills me. I learned a couple of years ago to not interview at a place where our family would not move. I was offered a sweet teaching gig at a prestigious all girls school. Guess what we chose - a mining consultancy.

The strategy in searching for jobs is that if you get an offer, you can end up at a better school, or you can take your offer and bargain a better compensation package at your current school. You could even get the schools counter-offering and pushing up the salary or assigned time benefits. I have actually seen this in practice and it is a marvelous thing. Unfortunately, "Elephant U" is a union school and I fall under the collective bargaining agreement. Thus, I cannot bargain anything - even with a really good offer. When I talked to my current department chair about my interview, he provided this insight "we are like major league ball players, except that the money isn't good and we can't just tear up our old contract and negotiate a new one when we want." At non-union schools, this is not correct, but where I am, this is true. This leaves me only with the exit strategy. Not much of a strategy to improve your salary, huh? In case I haven't said it before, I hate unions.

The Perils of the Academy - pt. 1

The last few days of the semester were rough. I had two stacks of math homework (I didn't grade the first half at midterm), 95 papers grad and undergrad, and finals from two classes to grade. Oh, and two theses. I took my time because grades weren't due until January 4th.

Unfortunately that was also the first day of intersession. I have taken to calling it wintersession because I think that calling it 'intersession' is misleading if not outright false advertising for students who only briefly glance at the schedule then immediately sign up, only to be disappointed later. Wintersession is good for my pocketbook, but not my psyche. Imagine 16 weeks of class material crammed into 3 hour classes 4 nights a week for 3 weeks. The students get to take another course in a very short amount of time, and I get an additional 10% of my salary. I found that most students take the class knowing that they won't have to remember much and they can tolerate almost any subject if it is only 3 weeks long. I teach one of the more boring and dreaded classes, so I ended up with a full room on January 4th. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I make it out to be, but I am not my wife who had to put the kids to bed each night while I was gone. I also signed up to teach a graduate class this summer for environmental studies, "Environmental Law." It is a class that they all need, and I want to prep it, so it may work out just fine. I also was awarded a fellowship to work on the newly formed Center for Sustainability at school. It is in no way free money. I have to help coordinate outreach activities and move all of our students into an online portfolio system.

Each of these classes or fellowships ends up adding another 10% to my salary. Even with the furlough (I'm currently making 90% of my salary), this year I hope to make right up to the salary cap of 125% of my salary! While this sounds like I'm rolling in cash, you must remember that this amount, 125% of my salary, is approximately the same amount of money that a 5 year veteran of the LAPD makes with a language bonus. It is much less than an entry level consultant in D.C., but significantly more than a k-12 teacher in Utah (#47 of 50 states for average educator salary). Oh, and I live in Southern California, which is renown for its low cost of living.

Normally, I don't think that I would sign up for these winter or summer school classes. Those times are reserved for thinking, writing, working on tenure, and spending time with my family. The main problem is that my salary isn't enough to support a family of 5 without help, and the furlough hasn't made that any easier. I have become a hustler - constantly looking for some new scheme to make a couple more bucks. I don't have any fancy clothes, or look like Snoop Dogg, but I feel like a slimy character nonetheless. This academic hustling is what I call prostituting your brain.
You see the sad part of the entire story is that Academics don't have much else going for them besides their brain. I for instance have lobbied every semester to have someone place a chili beside my name on ratemyprofessor.com. Each semester, the students shoot me this look that says "I pity you for asking, but I still can't sink that low." We are all geeks with poor physiques, stupid jokes, overly analytical worldviews, and no self-censoring mechanism - the perfect blind date nightmare. We can't sell anything else of worth except our brains. I imagine that prostitutes think the same thing as most academics - "I'll stop doing it when I can just save enough to stop." The honest truth is that we are addicted to the little bit more money that we can bring in as we get better at performing our tricks. We work hard to make ourselves look better for our clients, hoping that the next step will bring a little more of a payoff. Yet we have to admit in the end, we have traded ourselves for something of less worth. Maybe I'll stop selling my brain for 10% of my salary per trick. Probably not.

The lessons learned about bargaining in an open Saudi market, while never leaving the USA

I supervised my first 2 Master's theses. One was unbelievably good, the other not so much.
The first student only needed 4 or 5 office visits and two drafts of the thesis before he was done. His public presentation was better than anything I could do. Needless to say, he was immediately snatched up into a great company.
The other student started her work over a year earlier, burned through two other advisors, and needed an inordinate amount of my effort to get the thing written. She made no changes to the first or second draft, even when I had asked her to do so. I revised her thesis twice within 24 hours, both times suggesting significant changes. The day of the deadline, she came into my office begging for my approval. My children were there. She begged and I said no, she pleaded, I said no. Finally she told me that she was going to be deported and essentially tortured because she had not finished her thesis in the time allotted her by her scholarship. I signed the approval form on the condition that she would revise the thesis according to my standards within the week. She needed two more signatures, but was unable to get them. In the end, we found an exit strategy for her that had a later deadline.
It was an embarassment to me. The most hurtful was to see the confusion in son E.'s eyes when he looked up at me after hearing her pleading, understanding my argument to uphold my standards, and watching me cave to a bastardized solution with my signature. He simply said "You signed it? Why? She was wrong." I felt less than the dust of the earth. I made a committment that day that I would never relax my standards, agree to an insufficient compromise, or in any other way reduce the amount of respect that my children would have for me. I learned a lot about negotiating and defending standards through the eyes of my son.
I later learned that she was in no danger, and only needed to graduate because she would have had to return home rather than be allowed to stay on a different type of visa. If I could repeat that day, I would. I learned a lot. I made significant changes to my advising strategy, but if I disclosed them, you would probably accuse me of being xenophobic. Maybe most importantly, I never want to bargain with a Saudi ever again.

Management by Rationale

For over thirty years, everyone in the Political Science department had just submitted the days and times that they wanted to teach which classes. Maybe the Chair of the department would suggest someone teach a different class, but on the whole, we just hired part time faculty if we needed something different than what was proposed. This lead to some classes being offered much more than they needed to be and others never offered. When the Dean started messing with our class load - moving us from 3 classes per semester to 4, and adding many more students to each class - I proposed that someone look comprehensively at student demand and see if we could move back to a 3/3 workload. I spent much of last semester gathering data that no one had ever looked at in our department. I thought through all of the possibilities and what we would have to do (students, schedules, classes, etc.). Finally, in the last part of the semester, people caught the vision and a flurry of meetings took place. Each department thought through their curriculum and student needs. We started planning years of course offerings rather than a semester by semester plan. The 5 and 6 hours planning meetings were largely without problem, which is unheard of here. People caught the vision of a reduced load, and they have worked for it. It has even left some of us dreaming (or having nightmares) about the different possible combinations of class offerings, schedules, and faculty assignments.

We still have a few minor details to work through, but my (now everyone's) scheduling project looks like it is a tentative go. We submitted the plan to the Dean and she said that it looked good. Now we are waiting on approval from the 'much higher ups.' It is odd that no one had looked at our department in a comprehensive manner or made a comprehensive plan in 30 years. While I seriously dislike the budget crisis, it has forced us to rethink our existence as a department. I just hope these positives aren't balanced out by something worse, the largely rumored pay cut. More to come on that later.

The three months of Christmas

We set up Christmas in November. It was a record for us. We knew that the little was coming, so she became our excuse. Nearly every other year of my life since I was 14, I have been the family scrooge. Most recently, Christmas has reminded me of finals, grading, grades, term papers, and deadlines. This semester with my busy schedule I thought that it would be worse. It turns out that Christmas couldn't last long enough. We took the decorations down in mid January. We spent the entire break at home. My sister and family had us up for dinner and there were things to do, but mostly we just stayed home. Our house was lit by our tree every night - from the day we set it up until the minute we took it down. I would come home from my wintersession class to a nicely lit living room and just enjoy it. We actually thought about taking the decorations off and just leaving it as our requisite houseplant (fake greenery). It became slightly embarrassing, so we caved to peer pressure. That and the fact that it never felt like Christmas outside. I think that I had to wear pants a couple of times, but living in shorts year round makes it difficult to believe it is Christmas time.

The newest little

My wife gave birth to our third child, a beautiful little girl, two days before Thanksgiving. She came out very small, 6lbs 14oz. Within a few weeks she didn't seem so small anymore. That didn't stop all of the fear associated with knowing that she completely depends on my wife for everything. Obviously I help out when I can, but I simply don't produce milk.

What frightens me the most is when the newest little chokes. Breathing seems like such a simple thing to us who have taken nearly 20 million breaths, but when you have only done it 1,000 or so times you aren't going to be good at it. Today she is somewhere close to 120,000 breaths and at least 100 of them scared the crap out of me. All it takes is a little bit of spittle at the wrong time and 'BAM!' she struggles to breathe. Maybe it is because I think that suffocating would be one of the worst ways to die, but I start to panic. She has always made it through, so until she doesn't, I should just enjoy her.

She's nice.

Haitus

Dear readers,
Sorry for the unannounced hiatus. Had I know that my next post would be nearly 3 months after my last post, I would have apologized in advance. Here it is, the end of January, and I finally have a chance to write. Needless to say I have been busy. Here is an overview of my future posts with titles (more to come on these in the following days).

• "M. C. Tucker - the newest little" My wife gave birth to our third child, a beautiful little girl. I am always amazed at that process and the subsequent terrors associated with having to take care of someone so helpless.
• "The three months of Christmas." We set up Christmas in November. We took the decorations down almost three months later. Normally I am a scrooge, but for some reason, this Christmas was more than enjoyable.
• "Management by Rationale" My scheduling project looks like it is a tentative go. This would make my life and everyone else's much easier here. It is odd that no one had looked at our department in a comprehensive manner or made a plan on how to meet student needs in 30 years. If we would have done it earlier, each faculty member may have never had to teach more than 3 classes per semester.
• "The lessons learned about bargaining in an open Saudi market, while never leaving the USA." I supervised my first 2 Master's theses. One was unbelievably good, the other not so much. I learned a lot about negotiating and defending standards through the eyes of my son.
• "The Perils of the Academy - pt. 1" The end rush of the semester - finals, papers to grade, and theses to supervise - left me very tired. Fortunately for my pocketbook, but not my psyche, I got a wintersession class. 16 weeks of material crammed into 3 hour classes 4 nights a week for 3 weeks - all for an additional 10% of my salary. Hopefully my summer class will also make (have enough students). Oh, and I got a fellowship to do some extra work for Environmental Studies. Putting it nicely, I'll call this problem prostituting your brain.
  
• "The Perils of the Academy - pt. 2" I turned down a job interview in another place. It is much prettier there. I still have one job application pending elsewhere, but this is one of the most difficult processes for me - the choosing, not the interviewing. A quote from my current department chair "we are like major league ball players, except that the money isn't good and we can't just tear up our old contract and negotiate a new one when we want."
• "The Perils of the Academy - pt. 3" Professors face an interesting problem in that they don't make enough to live near people with similar standards, interests, and goals. Maybe this isn't true outside of major metropolitan areas, but it is true for me, and that is all that matters right now.
• "Cracked: Student Edition" A raging tirade of emails after a student request for a scholarship recommendation. I now watch carefully at school in case he shows up.

I am scheduling these to show up over the course of the next few days so that you aren't overwhelmed with material.