I also think of a colleague who was up for post-tenure review who commented he had been nominated a few years but after the first year (when he won) he didn't bother to submit materials any more. And wow, that's how I want to be when (if) I finally grow up: not so dependent on outside validation to feel good. But for now, I'm hoping. (Also the award does carry a small stipend with it).
If I were to be nominated for a research award again, though, I might not submit, on the grounds that it's someone else's turn; I won in 2017. (The ethics of these things are hard to parse. My gut feeling is that if you win once, you should let someone else have a chance, but...I don't know. I also know people with multiple awards. Though that little bit of extra money is nice).
But yeah. If I win teaching award this year (not that likely; lots of us are nominated and they often go for the person who is either v. close to retirement or who has done something tremendously innovative), I'd not put in for it if I were nominated next year.
* Some of the sad things you deal with in teaching. I am working with a student now whose sister is a single parent and is (apparently; I assume from what he has said) suffering from cancer. He's had to miss a couple times because he needed to help with her kids. He had arranged to make up something he missed this morning but I got an e-mail: she's been taken to the hospital, I have to get the kids ready and to school, can I do it later today?
It's not a BIG deal to me (I gave him the window I am most likely to be here this afternoon) but it does make me sad that he's having to deal with this. A lot of our students have life challenges and one thing I've really learned is to be flexible about things like this. But also to put my foot down when it's someone wanting to miss for a frivolous reason (I had a student ask me once if they could miss a class where something rather important was happening, because it was an 8 am class, and he had wanted to drive up to Tulsa the night before to go to the midnight opening of some movie with a friend and I was like, "It's up to you to decide but I don't grant excused absences for that sort of thing" and he did show up to class...)
But yes. I wonder if the students making "frivolous" requests are aware that a lot of us are also working with students dealing with some very big, sad, and heavy things, and that's why we're sometimes less-sympathetic to their requests than they think we should be.
* Have mostly been working on the various "blanket adjacent" projects - made a few more of the yellow squares for the Color-Bar Blanket (I'm almost done with those, and then I guess it's on to navy blue, or maybe black.). I also added another repeat to the Hygge blanket last night while watching Parks and Recreation on Amazon Prime. (Yes, I am going to slowly and doggedly work my way through the whole series. I think I like it a bit better after Season 1 - it seems they've refined Leslie's character a bit so she doesn't carry the idiot ball quite so much). My one complaint about the show is it does seem to spend a lot of time beating its characters down, though once in a while there's a little moment of redemption - the season 2 Christmas episode, where Leslie wound up dealing with the awful tabloid press (and the awful petty politician who figured he could concoct a story about him and her so he could avoid the real story about him and the babysitter, and how he utterly threw Leslie under the bus) ends with the rest of the team waiting for her to light the Christmas tree, because they know that's important to her. (And yeah, even if Swanson is a jerk to her a lot of the time, and Haverford is super smarmy and annoying....that little thing kind of redeemed the characters for me and made me feel like they were capable of an occasional unselfish act)
* A while back, I subscribed online to the UCC (United Churches of Christ, which is different from the Church of Christ*) Daily Devotional. Some of them are not so much for me (there are a lot where there's less mention of God and more of politics, and some make a call to activism beyond what I would be comfortable doing).
(*UCC is one of the more theologically - and generally, politically - liberal denominations. Their theology is probably not that far off from DOC, which I am. Church of Christ is more conservative in their theology...it gets complicated in Protestantism...)
But I liked today's one: Actively Waiting. The idea that yes, maybe Good doesn't win on this earth quite as fast as we'd like it to, but it's still gonna win.
Especially the line from the quoted Psalm: "do not be envious of wrongdoers" Yes. While I wouldn't say I'm *envious* of some people who do wrong, I feel a certain frustration when I see people doing wrong and getting away with it, and in some cases, even prospering. The person who decides to slack off on their duties and gets more free time, whereas I find myself in the office late. Or when someone seems to be lionized, even though deep down I know they're not a very nice person, and I see people around me laboring in obscurity but trying to do what they know is right.
And yes. One of the eternal problems I have is comparing myself to other people: "Wow, I feel like a chump because that person slacks off on grading, and here I am at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon still working on my own" or my anger when someone once commented they were glad I did a big writing project in MY class because it meant THEY didn't have to (Even if you feel that way? NOT COOL to say it).
And my other problem is, I do still have that seven year old girl strong inside of me. And yes, there's a delightful side to that - the past two days, coming home to amazon boxes on my porch, both of which contained stuffed animals as birthday presents from friends filled me with delight and reminded me that yes, people DO love me. But that seven-year-old is also obsessed with 'fairness" and gets angry when things are not fair, especially when she feels like she is on the losing end*
I've opined before that my inner child is at times like a mix of Linus van Pelt and Louise Belcher: Linus' intellect and tendency to ruminate, but Louise's hair-trigger temper and overly developed sense of desert. (And I do think in a way Louise is obsessed, as many little kids are, with fairness, but she also has a tendency to look for an angle where she can get a little more of the share of "fairness" for herself...)
(* Of course I must insert this old Calvin and Hobbes, where the joke is, of course, because Calvin is a kid in a middle- or upper-middle class American family, with two healthy parents who love each other, and who himself enjoys good health and has a roof over his head and plenty of food, he is the one in whose favor things are unfair:
* But of course, when a person is at their best, they know it's not all about them. This account of the captain of HMS Carpathia (the ship that managed to scoop up 705 of the survivors of the Titanic) came across my Twitter feed today. And I love that story. The captain of the Carpathia had, by all reports, never responded to a distress call before. He did things that probably broke the rules in the rulebook. But he saved a large number of people, some of whom would have doubtless died were it not for his actions.
I also can't help but think that he may have been doubting himself every step of the way: "Am I endangering my own passengers and crew?" "Will I be reprimanded or even lose my job for this?" "Is this even going to work?" And yet, it did. He saved some 705 people.
As I said on Twitter: if you find yourself in a position to (figuratively) be like the captain of the Carpathia, be like the captain of the Carpathia.
But even more than that: you don't have to be the captain: Passengers gave up their staterooms to house the rescued people. People opened their steamer trunks to get out warm clothes for the rescued people to wear. They did what they could to comfort them. The cooks did what they could to make hot soup and hot tea for the rescued people. Doctors were located and dining rooms were converted to hospitals. Everyone did what they could.
(Kind of like what I said on Sunday, about how we are all parts of one Body, and we all have a role to play).
* Not sure if I'm going to go to Sherman this Saturday. It's supposed to be *extremely* windy and I am not a big fan of crossing a bridge (I have to cross the Red River to get there) in high wind. I'll have to see how bad it is in the morning.
I would *like* to go - I want to go to A Balanced Skein and maybe rack up a few more Ulta Points while I'm getting double points (in my birthday month). And I probably need a new thing of face powder soon. And I'd like to go "big grocery shopping" again (I definitely like Kroger's brand of organic milk better than either Horizon brand or Fairlife, which are the two kinds I can get in town and YES I can taste a difference, maybe because Kroger doesn't add extra Vitamin D or protein, but both Horizon and Fairlife have a faintly "cooked" taste to me). And it would be nice to go out to lunch again, though I'm not sure where....not sure I want barbecue two weeks in a row, and the semi-fancy place near the yarn shop doesn't open for Saturday lunch.
If I don't go, though...that's fine too. If I can get my exam written today (this afternoon) and finish up the evaluation of the applicants for a scholarship, I can take the weekend off, and it would be nice to work on one of my many knitting/sewing projects.
(Next weekend is the memorial service for one of the long-term members of CWF, and I have already volunteered myself to cook and serve at the family lunch, and I am totally fine with that. I like doing that kind of service when I can. I remember how helpful it was to have "family lunch" after my own grandmother's funeral, and so I feel like I'm paying back)
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