August 9, 2011, 9:13 am

Not ashamed

On Friday night, I was at restaurant with a group of friends, and as it turned out, three of us (me and two other female Ph.D.s) were all in non-traditional academic jobs — and we all love our jobs. All three of us are in center-related positions with administrative and research responsibilities, and we are pretty happy. One expressed a wish that she had more time for independent research, but that is not an uncommon sentiment even in traditional academic jobs.

I thought of the our conversation when I read this piece in Inside Higher Ed:

When we were interviewing contributors for the first edition of Job Search in Academe, an editor at a respected academic journal told us apologetically that she “liked her job, she really did!” Many of the pleasures of teaching, she told us, were central to her job on the “outside”: working with writers, playing with words and layouts, engaging in…

August 5, 2011, 8:44 am

I'm back!

By Minerva Cheevy

My Epic Summer of Epicness (and Epic Exhaustion) is pretty much over now – and not a moment too soon. I am tired, people. I spent a month in the field, which was great and all, but tiring, then drove back across the country, went to work for four days, then flew to another place for a friend’s wedding, came home for less than 24 hours – 4 of which I spent at work – and then drove five hours away for a big conference. All of this was wonderful and time well spent, but there wasn’t much time for sleep in there.

Now my life is somewhat normal again, although still very busy. Next week is our center’s annual conference, so it’s a bit crazy around here as we try to get it all organized.

Some updates on my productivity:

of the three papers that were in review already, one was accepted (which I already wrote about), one was favorably reviewed but rejected as not being right for the journal,…

June 27, 2011, 1:09 pm

Living in the moment in the field

By Minerva Cheevy

It happens every year. I spend weeks or months planning and looking forward to my fieldwork, and then as soon as I get there I start counting the days until I go home. I’m like that with just about everything, I think – I make all these big plans and then I can’t wait until it’s all over. It is ridiculous.

I am trying not to do that this year. I am in the most beautiful place in the country, with a good crew, and the work is going reasonably well. I am trying to enjoy this now, and not just later when it is a fond memory.

June 15, 2011, 8:57 pm

Hittin' the road!

By Minerva Cheevy

I’m driving across the country tomorrow – well, at least across part of it – on my way to my field site. Fingers crossed for no grizzly bear encounters!

June 8, 2011, 7:41 am

Is this what normal feels like?

By Minerva Cheevy

I haven’t had seasonal allergies since I was about 13 – or at least I thought I haven’t had them – despite living in some cities with extremely high levels of allergens. My husband has crippling allergies, especially in the last place we lived, and has to take medication so he feels just sorta crappy, which is a vast improvement over how he feels without them.

This spring, here in our new city, I’ve been feeling a bit tired and rundown and headachy. Spouse was pretty sure it was allergies, but I wasn’t convinced. Finally, last night I took an Allegra for the first time.

Holy crap!! Is this what normal, not-sick people feel like every day? It’s fucking amazing! I woke up half an hour before the alarm went off this morning, happy and full of energy. I don’t even recognize myself.

June 2, 2011, 2:50 pm

Accepted!

By Minerva Cheevy

This paper got accepted this morning, with no further revisions. Hooray! I’m especially pleased about this one because two undergrads who worked with me (one as an REU student, one as an intern) are co-authors, and I am very proud of them. A year ago right now, we were just getting started on the main experiment in the paper – for me, this is extremely fast turnaround.

Things have suddenly gotten busy here at the Center, as we are planning our annual Center conference and also our first meeting with our external advisory board. We also have a meeting with our funding agency in a couple of weeks… pretty stressful stuff, especially since people keep asking me for a schedule for the conference, which I can’t make until I get feedback from people who aren’t answering my emails!! Grr. I politely reminded them last week that I am leaving in two weeks for the field, and if they want my help …

May 24, 2011, 9:18 pm

750words

By Minerva Cheevy

My MacBook Air is in the shop (sad!) because a couple of weeks ago, the hinge randomly cracked. Turns out it is a known issue and Apple is fixing it for free, which is good, but I had to have it shipped to Apple to be fixed, which is less good. I can’t whine too much, though, because I do have four Mac laptops, so I am using an older one now, a five-year-old MacBook that I haven’t used much in the past year. All of this is a really long and pointless introduction to tell you that I stumbled upon some links that I bookmarked almost a year ago, some of which were bookmarked in order to look at them later (and therefore I really had no idea what they were).

One of them was a link for 750words.com. I had no idea what that was, so I clicked it – and turns out it is a super awesome website where you are encouraged to write at least 750 words a day – privately. The setup is really lovely, it’s…

May 2, 2011, 2:04 pm

Adjuncting ruins lives

By Minerva Cheevy

The recent kerfuffle in the blogosphere about advice for adjuncts, plus my own recent observations of friends’ lives, really got me thinking about my own experiences. I have done my time as an adjunct, and I remember it as a very dark period in my life. Unless you’re one of those happy adjuncts who enjoys the job, is treated well, and has financial stability, adjuncting can ruin your life. We are told that it can benefit our careers – and sure, it can be a good way to get some teaching experience. But in many cases, especially if you end up doing it for a long time, I think it can harm more than it helps.

At my graduate institution, being a graduate assistant or a teaching assistant wasn’t a common option. However, the university relied extremely heavily on adjunct labor, and was more than happy to hire grad students as adjuncts to teach classes. I taught my first class in 1999, and…

April 29, 2011, 2:45 pm

Being responsible is exhausting

By Minerva Cheevy

I’ve been absurdly productive for the entire month of April. I have:

Revised and resubmitted.
Submitted this stupid manuscript to its fourth journal (yep, it got rejected from that submission back in October)
Gotten juuuuuuust about ready to submit my research week paper, pending final approval from co-authors.
Given a presentation on a fourth project that is finally moving along well.
Reviewed three papers.
Gotten a blog for the research center up and running – and it’s lovely!
Read and taken notes on one published paper a day, every workday
Written up my goals and very detailed plans for summer fieldwork

Aaaaand…. I have now hit a wall. For the last two or three days, I have been pretty much braindead and exhausted. My grand accomplishments lately have been the following:

ordered a wedding present for a friend
printed out directions to a nearby state park, and the trail …

April 7, 2011, 9:12 am

Productivity peaks

By Minerva Cheevy

The reviewers wanted to see a new analysis, so I ran it yesterday. To my surprise and glee, the results were significant and they strengthened my conclusion. Hooray! I plan to go ahead and resubmit tomorrow, once my co-authors look it over today. They’ve been surprisingly speedy lately, so I’m not worried. I also got comments back from co-authors on my newest manuscript, and I plan to submit that by the end of the month. Finally, I plan to revise the manuscript that won’t die and submit it to its fourth journal in May. This means that, for the first time in my life, I will have THREE manuscripts in review at once. [Possibly FOUR, if Ambitious Grad Student actually submits the 'omics paper, on which I'm second author, next month!]

What the hell is up with all this productivity? Why on earth couldn’t I do this while I was a postdoc? I’ve been giving this question some thought lately. One …