Cheshire_Cat

It can be overwhelming, but get used to it. Actually being in the graduate program is a lot worse.

Just like anything, it's not a big deal unless you make it a big deal. They won't "know what it is like" to be an academic, but I don't know what it is like to be a doctor, or be in the military, so everyone has to get used to differences. The main thing is, if you are a deep thinker, you may want someone else who is a deep thinker. This may be harder to find outside of academia, but it isn't impossible.

Harry Potter fan theories. Ok, maybe hate is a strong word, but the books will have been out 10 years in July. Why are these still coming across my news feed? I like HP as much as the next person, but seriously...

The TV shows I watch always kill my favorite characters... probably shouldn't have been watching TV anyway. Also, students come to me not understanding the questions on my tests. But it isn't the material, it is just that they really don't have the mathematical/logical background they need in order to do it. This is after over 14 years of school. I'm dumbfounded. I was homeschooled and literally did everything possible to avoid doing anything math related, and I could do the math/logic on the test.

I have a motto: When you are off balance, avoid slippery slopes. Alcohol isn't bad in of itself, but it can be a slippery slope, and the Ph.D program has a way of putting you off balance. You have to know your limits and if you think it might be a problem, then it is best to avoid it.

I've had a cold for a month and had to teach students and such with it. It is misery. But your interviewers come into contact with 100s of people a day, so they can't really trace it back to you. That is one of my top dislikes about academia. I am in contact with so many people that it feels like I am sick all of the time. I rarely got sick when I had my own cube and didn't interact with people most of the day. Now I get 2 or 3 colds a semester. My body is making up for never being sick as a child, haha.

Rampant tribalism. I remember a day when you could disagree with someone's politics/religion/morality and still like and associate with them as a person. Bacon. Valentines day- It's so shallow and consumeristic... and yet I still bought my students candy because we will be in class Tuesday night.

Can we also talk about how pretentious the fancy words you have to use to order coffee at said establishment. I want a medium coffee. Is that grande, tall, or vente? I don't give a crap. I want a medium. You figure it out.

Yeah. Good advice. I have my "back up" parking garage with a valet and everything so that if I am running late I can drop it off there and not even worry about parking it, but it costs $5.50 more than my normal place.

Ouch!!! That sounds painful... buy something on Amazon and pretend it took longer to get to her than you expected

Someone emails me after 5 pm on Thursday and then when I don't respond, they email me and the department head on Monday Morning. Seriously? Give a girl a little more time before getting him involved. Ugh.

I have a cold and I have to teach. Ugh. Also, can we talk about pet adoption for a second. Completely unrelated to academia, but hey, so are a lot of things. I am a conservationist and have three rescue pets and think it is important to take care of our environment and the animals we bring into the world. However, I think the adoption scene has gotten ridiculous. They have lost sight of the goal. And the adopt don't shop rhetoric is great, until you think of the ramifications. The end goal is not to get everyone to adopt pets. The end goal is to not have a need to have an animal shelter because pets are being kept by responsible pet owners. In which case, we will need responsible breeders who care about the health and well-being of their dogs to breed puppies. But currently, it is seen as morally reprehensible to even consider buying a puppy from a breeder rather than a shelter, and breeders are looked down on as worse than Trump supporters. And the only thing in our shelters is pit bulls and Chihuahuas because for whatever reason irresponsible people keep breeding these two breeds of dogs. We can't even have pit bulls in an apartment so you can't adopt them. So, what if you want a dog of a specific breed? "Go to a breed specific rescue" people will say. Well, my friend did just that. She is looking for a mini poodle and the poodle rescue in our area actually had one that would be perfect for her. She is a single woman with no kids or other pets and plenty of time to spend looking after a dog. But, the rescue only adopts to people who have had prior experience with poodle hair. So, how could she get experience without owning a dog like that beforehand? She can't. So, she has to buy a dog from a breeder in order to gain that experience so that she can adopt some day down the line. Well, that is convoluted. They should offer classes in poodle hair care or something, but just disallowing the adoption is crazy, imo. That rant probably didn't make sense. All I am saying is that I see problems down the line for pet ownership if we continue to go down the road we are going down, and while it is important to shut down puppy mills and the like who torture dogs for money, we need to focus more on responsible pet *ownership* rather than just where you get your pet from. Also, since I am already pissing off everyone who owns pets... I like purebreds as much as the next person, and I think we should keep breeding purebreds because you can get an idea of temperament and stuff from a specific breed, but the people who are mixing the dogs to make "Chi-weenies" and "Shi-poos" are probably doing us a service, as most purebreds are inbred and have health problems. I don't mind if you argue with me. I just see these problems and I don't see anyone even talking about them, and I want answers, haha.

My office has furniture in it that is older than I am. Also, there are three other people in there and they are noisy, so unless I can find time to be alone, I try to work from home.

I only know of a couple of good accounting profs with tattoos, but they wear the guy-ponytail like it's going out of business, lol! The chair of the Marketing department at the university my dad works at has a sleeve. Business professors are probably the most conservatively dressed group on campus, but it is still not a huge deal, as long as you can research and teach. So, I guess the answer is- it depends. If you are afraid it may hurt your job prospects, or if it will make you self conscious about them, then I'd avoid them, or wait until you are tenure.

Warning: This part is TMI, so if you are a guy, don't read, haha! It's that time of the month, and I have a hard time speaking coherently and I'm cramping really bad, like -substantial amounts of painkiller wasn't doing anything for me- bad. So of course I have to teach... and we ran out of time and I got flustered when I realized we were going to run out of time. /End TMI Most of the time I don't hate teaching, but I don't like having to teach and go to class and research at the same time. I feel like I am working all day and barely treading water. And I feel like a failure in the classroom and like I won't ever get any better. I am confident in the material, but the second something unexpected happens in the classroom I get all flustered and start stuttering incoherently. I know it is important to learn how to teach, but I wish I didn't have to learn until after I was done going to classes myself. I feel like barely surviving is all I can do right now and actually improving in my teaching is out of the question just because I don't have time or the mental power. Part of it is that the problems and powerpoints I have to use have errors and I can't vet each and every one before class so then when questions come up I look like an idiot. Or, I improve in one area and screw up another. There is so much pressure to be a good teacher, and I understand that, but it takes a while to get there, and I am frustrated because I don't feel like I am getting there as quickly as other people. And I am the American, so I should be better than the people who do not have English as their first language, but I'm not.

My sister and I had a pretty rocky relationship around the time I moved away. The distance helped heal it, and then a couple of years later she spent a few months on my couch, which solidified it. Now we talk quite frequently on the phone and are much closer than we have been since we were little kids. Don't lose hope. Sometimes distance does make the heart grow fonder.

I think seeing both professors and students as people is important. I am also an introvert, so I had a really hard time connecting with students at first. This was made worse by how nervous I was. Last semester I learned how to connect better, but didn't do so until the end of the semester. This week, I tried connecting with students as soon as possible. I memorized their names, and took some time getting to know them at the beginning of class. I had a lot more fun teaching, and I was also able to add things I learned about people into the lecture to make it more interesting. I've figured out that it is not just for my student's sake. When I have a personal connection with the students I am much more confident as a teacher.

Update: The student I was worried about dropped or changed sections. Yay!! Also, one girl joined my section who I have had before, twice. The first time (my first semester teaching) she dropped, and the second time she failed. Third time is a charm. It is nice to know that at least one student has seen me through all of my struggles learning to teach and still decided to take my class again, haha.

Yeah, I talked to my dad, who has been teaching for almost 40 years, and he said he had a student this semester who appealed last semester and it was normal. Still frustrating, but it sounds like everyone has those things, and it has only gotten worse recently.

I am bad at teaching, but getting better. That is not to say I am a bad instructor. My students do well on the tests and always have. I just have a hard time connecting with the students and controlling the classroom, so my evaluations are low. So, I have to teach this semester, again. But I've come to peace with that. However, I just learned that the student that went over my head- my class coordinator's head, and the head of the department, all the way to the *dean* to complain about my teaching- is in my upcoming class. Fuck. She was in the first class I taught, and did way worse than all the other students. And she had this entitled attitude and took everything I did out of context to make it look worse than it was. I was just put as the assigned instructor for the class recently. I'm hoping she sees who it is and decides to take a different section. Maybe now I could help her do better, but I don't know if I can get over her going to the dean and being such a drama queen in my earlier class. Also, learning to teach is tough. And some students are like "I am paying for this class, I shouldn't have to take it from a new teacher." Well, guess what? I am paying to teach the freaking class! Not only is there a little stupid fee associated with teaching (wth?) but I could be making twice as much money if I wasn't in academia, so the opportunity costs are way higher for me. That is why there are so few business professors. But you have to be bad before you are good, and good before you are great. And you have to learn how to teach somewhere. That is why tuition is lower at this school than at a nice private school. It sucks, but that is how it is.

I have to pay a pet "fee" (Not even a deposit. You won't get it back) and a pet rent at the place I am about to move to. I don't mind as much because they have a dog park, a dog wash station, and doggie waste stations everywhere so I won't have to worry about that. They are earning the rent, imo. OTOH, my old place just randomly decided to add a $20 pet rent, after already charging a large pet fee, without making any improvements to the quality of pet ownership. They are also totally screwing me over on the move out. The fees for repairing things is horrendous. The first apartment I was in was very reasonable when I moved out and only charged a $80 cleaning fee, which is reasonable, but this one wants to charge $35 just to clean the toilet... good thing I have an overlap of 1.5 months with my new apartment to clean. And my former roommate ruined the kitchen linoleum by burning it, but it was crap to begin with and could be scratched by anything. They charge $300 to replace that. And my former roommate's room needs its carpet replaced... and my former roommate is broke, so we'll see if I get any money from him. He is my brother, so he will be shamed until he pays me back, but it is still stressing me out right now.

It is getting near the end of the semester, which means my artistic side wants to come out so that I can think about things in a diffuse state. Unfortunately, I have something wrong with my hands and too much use causes them to be in a lot of pain or numb with a lot of activity. So I have to save them for writing my end-of-term papers. I want to needle-felt and I want to draw, and both seem like a terrible idea if I want to be able to function for the rest of the semester. I need a new hobby.

Also, I'm trying to give y'all what other people see in him, not exactly what I believe, because that was the original question. Also, you don't understand your own position until you understand the strongest argument for the other side. So far, I see the left making a lot of guesses about why Trump happened, and they are all weak arguments. They don't line up whatsoever with why the people I know voted for him. And until you understand why the hell people would vote for him, despite all of his vile ways, you will never beat him.

One of my few political posts this election was denouncing people who said that what Trump said was okay because others have said and done worse. It is not ok. It will never be okay. The man is vile in other ways and I would never vote for him. In fact, I never once posted why you shouldn't vote for Hilary, but several times I posted about why you shouldn't vote for Trump. However, I don't believe everything I hear, especially if I can use it to justify my own biases. Those people only came forward after he started running for president. The guy is a multi-billionaire. Certainly someone should have come forward before then, if just to get some money off of him. Now, I'm not defending him. If he did it, he should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. However, I was also an auditor for a number of years and I have learned that just because someone says something, does not mean it is true. Innocent until proven guilty is still the rule of law. But now that he is elected, we should try to work with him, because I want what is best for the country. When the Democrats took office and passed the ACA, the Republicans refused to work with them, and I think we got a worse plan for it. Now the Republicans have the power, and some of the things they propose make me cringe. But that is why we have to work together. They need to moderate eachother, because otherwise it will be the dystopian future y'all are afraid of.

Unfortunately my school does not participate. But I did get my mentor to come watch me teach and he gave me some tips which have dramatically improved my teaching.