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The other day, I commented, "I can already start putting pretty good bets on who's going to approach me about supervising their theses".

Had I actually placed such a bet, I'd be heading home tonight a richer woman. The first one asked me today (i.e., a good four months in advance of when she needed to) if I'd be her supervisor.

Score.

I didn't end up saying what I was planning to say in this post because I had plenty of other things to say first. Here are a few of them.

It's hard to put into words how much I love teaching. It is basically everything I ever dreamed it would be when I first decided, around age 13, that it was what I wanted to do. My Wednesday morning tutorial group for Logic, Language, & Reality is turning out to be a great one -- small, but populated with people who are ready to come in and just start talking, without (much) prompting from me, and also in response to each other's questions rather than waiting for me to answer them. And when I put forth a question, they explore possible answers to it, rather than staring at me dumbly. Because they've read the material and are engaged in it, we end up having really interesting discussions -- last week, we had a 20 minute diversion on the origin and development of the universities in the Middle Ages. This morning, someone asked "But what are Frege's views on numbers?" and so we talked about 1-1 correspondences and equivalence classes, and I told them that if I can get a 3rd year philosophy of math module going, we'd read Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic -- which holds a special place in my heart as the very first piece of contemporary analytic philosophy that I ever read. My Frege/Russell/Wittgenstein class basically revolutionized my philosophical world: I had NO IDEA that philosophy could be conducted this way and on those questions. It was one of the best courses I had as an undergrad -- we'd arrive early to lecture every week and stay late (I was routinely late for my History of Modern Philosophy discussion section, in part because that class was by far the low point of my undergrad philosophical career. It was just SO BORING), and at the end of the semester the professor took us all out for pizza.

There's three people in this group that are doing joint philosophy/math degrees, and I find it astonishing that there is such a degree programme here and NO PHILOSOPHY OF MATH COURSE. (They agree with me, and would really like that to change, so I've told them to start telling staff this.) I think I should be able to do it without too much difficulty: I can adapt my current 3rd year seminar from being modal logic & incompleteness to being incompleteness & foundations of math -- and it would make sense, since clearly it's the phil of math. stuff that the 2nd year course this year is going to be a feeder for, whereas last year it was clearly modal logic. So I hope I can slide this in as a minor change to course content rather than as the development and deployment of a wholly new course, which I doubt would fly.

But it's only a month into the year and I've already got a cohort of motivated and excited students who are interested in the things I am interested in; I can already start putting pretty good bets on who's going to approach me about supervising their theses. That's the ONE thing about last year that really made me feel validated in how I handled the 2nd year course -- the fact that almost as soon as signing up for supervision opened, my list was full, proving that there were people who found the material interesting, stimulating, and worthwhile. (In fact, it is a small matter of smug pride that my list was full before a majority of the others: People knew that there would be competition for a limited number of slots!) I have been so pleased with my supervisees this year so far -- we had a group meeting week before last, and it was great to see both the ideas they have (some of which are really quite serious and substantial, and I have high hopes for) and how interested they were in what others were doing, offering questions and comments even if the topic was far from theirs. I hope to have them all together again once or twice next term, and then perhaps also in Easter term after they've submitted. Maybe we'll go for celebratory drinks. But these are people who care about what they are doing, and what they care about is what I care about, and how on earth could one NOT enjoy this?

It's the end of the first week of lectures, and I'm reminded of why it is I wanted to do this in the first place.

Tuesday afternoon I walk into a sprawling lecture hall, and watch it fill up with students. The part I hate the most is that awkward period between when I arrive and when I start talking, but I never manage to minimize that because I am almost physically incapable of not arriving early to things like this. But then right from the start I get them to talk, to each other, to me, to raise ideas half-formed, with probably 8-10 people (out of ~60, so that's a fantastic percentage for a big lecture theatre!) volunteering questions, comments, and answers. When plotting my lectures, I often earmark questions and the answers I expect/want to receive, and this time, the students basically went bang bang bang down the list -- even in the order I had them! It was fantastic, and it set the foundation for the rest of the term: If they know from the start that this is how things are going to be, hopefully the ones who didn't talk will feel comfortable doing so in the future. And even if not, even if it's the same dozen or so people who participate in lectures, that's OK. Some people don't have the snap-ability to come up with questions or objections. Those can prepare their thoughts in advance and contribute in tutorials. Afterwards, I received an email from a student asking to set up a meeting to talk about the logic side of things (which we won't reach for a few weeks! Pro-activity on the part of a student!), and it ended, "P.S Tuesday's lecture was wonderful. Thank you!"

Yesterday was my first logic seminar; I had 13 people signed up, knowing that 2 of them (and possibly one more not formally enrolled yet) were going to be coming on Mondays instead, I figured there was a good chance of getting a good crowd. I realized a bit belatedly that it would be worthwhile advertising this course to the MA and PhD students, so the email didn't go out until Thursday morning, but nevertheless 12 people showed up -- 10 undergrads and 2 master's students. Of the 10, 8 I had in my class last year, and four of them are writing their dissertation with me. :) I'm especially pleased to have these four back, I had some really interesting discussions with a few of them over the course of last year (and one of them, his dissertation topic has me very excited, it's a bit bizarre, really, because all my hanging out with the computational social choice people in Amsterdam (i.e., Joel's research crowd!) is paying off, because what he's planning to write on falls squarely within that remit.) We get two hours, so I spent the first hour sketching very briefly basics, to ensure that we're all on the same page w.r.t. propositional logic, and then after a break I gave them some exercise sheets just to brush up on truth tables, and got to listen to that glorious sound of groupwork. Judging from the discussions I overheard, it was a good idea to have them do some of these exercises, even if they're the sort of thing they should've mastered in their intro logic class two years ago. For the remainder of the year, I want every student to be in charge of running the seminar twice -- since there are 12-15 people, that's 2-3 people each week, which will give them the opportunity to work in depth with someone else, a skill that I found so tremendously useful in my early logical career that I want to encourage whenever I can. (They were rather shocked when I told them that I encourage them to work in groups on the homeworks, and if they do, they should just hand in one answer sheet with the names of everyone who contributed. I don't want to have to read numerous duplicates!) Because the assessment comes in the form of a single end-of-term in-class exam, those who put their names down on homeworks w/o actually contributing will feel the full consequences then!

When I met with the few who can't come on Thursdays earlier this week, one of them asked if I was planning a 4th year follow-up module. Now, in philosophy, there are only three years, and then we switch to the master's modules, and I'm pretty well certain that the dept. is not going to be interested in having me offer an advanced logic module to the master's students, since most of them wouldn't have had the basis necessary to take it. But apparently the maths programme either is or can be four years. I mentioned the very vague possibility of a 4th year follow-up in Thursday's seminar, and afterwards another student came up to me and said "If that happens, I'll take it." Now I need to look in how exactly to get that set up: I think it would have to be an actual maths course, with a maths code, etc., because it appears that there is no such thing as cross-listed courses at Durham. I have no idea what the protocol is for someone from one department leading a module in another, if that's even possible. If it is, and I can get this done, then I would be in a position where I'm contributing teaching to modules in philosophy, maths, and modern languages and cultures (that's the dept. that handles the MA in medieval studies, which I currently give one lecture in one module for; someday I hope to expand that to entire module). And you know what? That's a pretty awesome feeling. THAT is true evidence of interdisciplinarity. I bet there are not many other people out that who teach in three different departments.

Early in September I was invited by one of my 3rd year students from last year, who stuck around Durham to do a Master's and is now running the Arts & Humanities Society, if I'd give an evening lecture as part of their series, possibly on some of the material I'd covered in the class she took. This seemed a perfect time to talk about the paper that I co-write with one of her fellow students, which will be published next year (and which I got the final On-line First version last night, conveniently enough), discussing what lessons for traditional theories of meaning we can learn from looking at fictional discourse and fictional languages -- i.e., I got to talk about Santa Claus, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes, Klingon, Quenya, Dothraki, Minionese, other nonsense languages, and play a couple of video clips. The lecture was yesterday, and probably 60-70 people came, including a few of my students. :) Gwen had been home from nursery the last two days after a stomach bug in the middle of the night on Tuesday, so she helped me make my slides -- they were just individual sentences to consider the truth values of, which I illustrated with random images from google. She helped pick them out. :) And then she helped me watch three Minion movie trailers to find the best one to link to, and there I was, sitting on the couch at home with her tucked under my arm, watching movies and laughing together, and calling it research. Work/life balance: It works sometimes.

Walking out to my talk last night, in the dimming twilight falling over the city, with the sun behind the clouds and the lights coming on, and the cathedral illuminated against the gloom, I thought about how amazing it is here and how lucky I am to have landed here. I intended to write this post about how Durham is the city where (my) dreams come true, but I need to break this off now as it's almost time to skype into the St. Andrews Latin reading group. Maybe I'll pick this back up after lunch.

Today was matriculation, when the students are formally entered into the university. It is broken into five ceremonies, with 3 (sometimes 4) colleges per ceremony. I didn't really know what matriculation was like, so when I saw an email asking for volunteers to marshal, I figured that would be a good way to do so. I first signed up for just the morning, but then a week in advance they still needed volunteers so I added myself to the afternoon rota, too.

Durham weather in early October can be quite variable, but many people commented on the fact that this was the worst weather matriculation had seen in years. It rained continually, from when I arrived at 8:45 to when I left shortly before 17:00. (It was only on the way home after I got Gwen from nursery that I furled my umbrella finally). I had an indoor/outdoor role, organizing (indoors) the students as they came in through the back chapel of the cathedral, then standing out front the main entrance to the cathedral during the ceremonies to direct any visitors or tourists down to the other entrance, and then shepherding the students out through the main entrance and down the correct exit path.

When I was given the indoor duty for the first ceremony, I thought "Yay, out of the rain!" It didn't take long to realize that, no, on a good day, the chapel is significantly cooler than outdoors, and on a bad day, the entrance, which I had to stand in front of to immediately direct students to my left as they came through, turned into a wind tunnel. After five ceremonies, I was rather cold and damp. Here's a view out that door:



A bit ago, I typed this up and posted it to FB:
Lessons learned from marshalling five matriculation ceremonies today:

1. Contrary to popular opinion, queuing does NOT come naturally to all Brits.
2. Teacher voice is needed to get everyone to (a) walk in the direction they need to, (b) stop when they need to, (c) go when they need to. We've got 600 people to file through this chapel, you're going to have to do the kindergarten snake and go down, turn 'round the column, come back up, all the way up, to me, all the way to me, and then turn and go back down, turn left at the statue, c'mon back up, and THEN into the cathedral.
3. Dressing for the rain isn't enough. You need to dress for the bloody wind coming through the wind tunnel the doors form.
4. Once the queue is going, all you really need to do is stand with one arm outstretched, palm politely forward.
5. A black robe means you are a student.
6. A black robe with a commanding tone means you are a symbol of authority (see (2)).
7. A black robe and standing in front of the main entrance asking "Can I help you?" is not always enough to indicate that "You aren't allowed in this entrance if you don't give me the right answer".
8. Dyeing my hair has shaved a good 5-10 years off my age. I am now "young lady" again.
9. If you think "I wonder if I should bring a thermos of tea with me", the answer is always "yes".
10. They're so young, they're all so young.
11. I can't wait until next year.

The academic conference dinner is among the more unique human of experiences. Put together a group of people who are marked out from the rest of the population on the basis of (a) years of education and (b) field of interest, taken in a very broad sense, add alchohol and indifferent-to-excellent food depending on the venue, and see what happens.

The conference dinner is one of the more important aspects of a conference, carrying as much weight and importance as the scientific programme does, if not more. It is generally towards the end of the conference, after a number of people have given their talks and have had awkward conversations with other attendees during the coffee breaks.

After 10 years in the business, I've learned how to play the game. I've learned what I need to do to succeed in the conference dinner charade, to play my part and make the theatricals a success.

(a) Give a talk on something wholly different from anyone else. When everyone else's slides are full of symbols, omit them from yours and instead include pictures of manuscripts. When you do have a proposition and a "proof" point it out explicitly so the audience realizes what they're getting. This will ensure that people who attend your talk notice you, and are either intrigued or threatened by what you're doing and want to engage you.

(b) Be the only woman at your table. it's not hard, in your field, but if you have a choice of being one of two women at a table of eight,opt for the seating arrangement where you are the only women. If the seating arrangements don't work so that you're the only woman, make sure that everyone immediately adjacent or diagonal to you is a man, AND that everyone immediately adjacent or diagonal to THEM is too. It's essentially the same situation.

(c) Booze. I don't like it, but I've learned that this works: if I have a glass or two of wine or champagne before going in to the dinner, it tramples my sometimes crippling shyness sufficiently and it lowers my inhibitions enough that I am willing to say the things that otherwise I would only think, because the thoughts are sometimes bold and inflexible. But bold and inflexible opinions get you noticed during a conversation, and ensure that not only do you have continual grist for conversation at dinners, people will remember you as having strong opinions. And often, it is strength of opinion that matters in academia, not correctness. And besides, the things that you're saying after a glass or two of wine are only things that you were thinking all along.

(d) Don't be afraid to introduce anecdotes about your kinds into the conversation, if they are germane. After all, even if you've engineered your seating so that you are the only woman amongst men, a goodly percentage of these men have children or grandchildren. If you break into the "anecdata from children" ground, you open up the ground for them to talk about their children, too, you signal that this is an acceptable line of conversation. No man is likely to do that amongst the company of other man, but you know what? Fathers and grandfathers like talking about their kids and grandkids too. They will be grateful to you for signalling that this is an acceptable topic of conversation.

(e) Pay attention to how often the server come by and top off your glass of wine. Know your limit is one glass per hour for no more than 4 hours straight, and if you downed that glass of champagne before the dinner started, recall that you implemented (c) and DRINK WATER. It fills the space between conversation just as well, and it gives others a chance to talk. Because it is very important to:

(f) Remember to give others the chance to talk. When you are the freak/star of your table, because your research is so unusual/because you are the woman and you have primed yourself to be able to talk to people that in any other circumstance you would find it incredibly difficult to talk to, remember that you are not the only one at the table that people will be interested in talking to. You do not need to carry the entire conversation the entire night. Others can shoulder the burden too.

Put on your mask. Play your part. Perform on stage dancing to the piper's tune. No one really believes that the academic conference dinner is anything other than a show, so know what your mask looks like put it on, and play the hell of your part.

I love this, I love this, I love this. [I have also been partaking of wine for the last 4 hours, so take this as you will.]

When I hang out with medievalists and go to medievalists conferences, I come away thinking “This is it. This is what I want to do. I want to be one of them. There are SO MANY fascinating topics to study. I want to devote my research career to them.” All other research projects or academic goals seem less important. Then, I got to spend a year doing undergraduate teaching – something I have been preparing myself to do for almost a decade and a half when I decided I wanted to go to graduate school in order to teach at university because high school kids just didn’t cut it. There have been many roadblocks, mostly due to mismatches of expectations, this last year at Durham – some of which I am still unsure whether I will eventually write about here or not; I am not sure if they are the sort of thing where it would be beneficial to do so or only stirring up frustrations; right now, I am not in an objective enough place to say – but even with all the complaints, all the rebellion, the pretty miserable reviews I got, I love teaching. When I have students in my office and I can get the lightbulb to turn on, I love it. When I have half a dozen or more quizzing me on this, that, the other thing, when it feels like I’m the one being examined instead of preparing them for their examination, I love it. It keeps me on my toes, it brings me to questions I’d never considered, and occasionally one of them says something that makes me realize all the work and effort is worth it, no matter how the others complain, these people get it and will remember this class (in a good way) for a long time to come. It is immensely satisfying, and in the last 6 months I have caught myself thinking “I’ve got the permanent job. Who cares about maintaining the research profile? If I can be an excellent teacher, then they’ll be perfectly happy with me.”

And then...and then I come to something like Dagstuhl, and I spend my days listening to, and talking to, the intersection of logic, philosophy, psychology, and computer science, when I find myself not only marked out as that weird person who knows about the history of logic (the quizzes I have gotten over meals and during coffee breaks have been both relentless and awesome) but also as someone who is a real logician and has something to say, and I cannot help but feel utterly at home. I have regained a sense of self this week that had been missing. The move to Durham, from a city that I loved and loved living in, and the resultant switch to a radically different academic trajectory from what I’d been used has been hard (I have a post brewing in response to something Nessa posted on FB awhile back, about what it is that constitutes my identity). This week has filled a lot of holes. I’ve hung out for logicians in close concentration for the first time since AiML in August – and there I only got to be there for one day of the conference before heading to Raglan and then to house hunting, so that hardly counted. I’ve wandered through silent gardens where there is nothing but me and my thoughts and there is no sense of hurry or immoderation. I can pace, slowly, and it is quiet. There is no one asking me why. There is no need to adult – no marking, no laundry, no grocery shopping, no house buying. Glumbunny posted recently about why would anyone ever want to leave home, leave all the things that make up home behind, and I laughed, because in this matter we are so different: Who wouldn’t want to leave behind the cares and chores of being an adult, and spend a week in a beautiful location where food is prepared and served for you without any work on your part, where there are cheese platters and wine in the evenings, where there is a freezer full of ice cream, where there are friends, where there are people who by now have know you for quite awhile, where there are people who are only beginning to know you but are learning they want to know you. I remember, some years back, when suddenly I realized that at some point along the way, sometime between high school and grad school, I became shy. I am recently feeling a sharp switch the other way, that somewhere along the way, I stopped being shy. I am in a context where I feel like I have a genuine contribution, that people have honest reasons for wanting to talk to me, that when I am sitting at a table with a bunch of middle aged men and a couple bottles of wine that this is where I belong. This week has been restorative to me in many respects, providing me a reprieve from daily life, giving me a beautiful garden and a castle ruin that I can wander at will, and then surrounding me with people who are genuinely fascinated by what I have to say. I brought William of Sherwood’s Introduction to Logic along with me in preparation for my talk in Prague in Sunday, and I have unexpectedly found that it has been apropos at so many moments during this week. It has been passed around, photographed, pored over, and enjoyed by so many people. It feels me with a small amount of glee to realize that all these people at this seminar had probably never considered the history of their subject to any great extent before, and now many of them have already been looking up how much used copies of Sherwood’s Introduction are on amazon. It is incredibly satisfying, because it feels like it justifies the organizer’s decision to invite me. That is how Dagstuhl seminars are – invitation only, and how I managed to warrant one in the first place I don’t know, because while there are certainly people here that I know, it is not the usual crowd that I am used to, so I was certainly not an automatic choice for the organizers, none of whom I’d known in any sort of significant capacity before this week. But after a night like tonight, after a week like this, I feel like whatever context I am invited in to, I can make good the organizer’s decision, to make them look back on my contribution and say “yes, it was a good idea to have her. She brought a lot of ideas that no one else would’ve had”.

It has been a good week (and it will be capped off by a weekend in Prague). I now need to cajole the internet access in my room long enough to get this posted, and then go to bed. We shall see...

I don't normally do long posts on FB, that's what this space is for, but increasingly there are far more people that I interact with regularly, esp. in an academic context, over on FB. Today, I wanted their opinions on the thought I had yesterday, so I wrote up and posted this:

...is pondering the idea of a class being "too hard".

This is a common complaint of students: "This class is too hard." There are, I think, a lot of things this can mean. It can mean:

* "It is harder than I want it to be."
* "It has more reading than I am used to."
* "It takes more of my time than I think it should."
* "It takes more of my time than my other classes do."
* "It presupposes material I haven't learned yet."
* "My teacher doesn't explain things well enough."
* "The material is contradictory."
* "I cannot devote the necessary time to it because I have a job/other classes that require too much time/family commitments/[insert other reason here]".

and probably a host of other things.

But what, really, would a class that's "too hard" be? One in which no matter how much time you put in, no matter how much extra reading (within a reasonable limit) you do, no matter how often you go to lecture or to the instructor(s)'s office hours, it is impossible to understand the material. A class which is taught solely in French when you have not had any French is probably legitimately "too hard", because no amount of reasonable extra reading you do is likely to put you into a position to understand the material; likewise, trying to do calc-based physics without calculus first is probably "too hard".

But "time-consuming", "has a lot of reading", "involves complicated concepts", etc.: are these reasonable explications of "too hard"?

I don't ever recall thinking, as an undergraduate, "This class is too hard". I recall thinking "This class is awfully hard", but the conclusion I drew from that was "I need to spend more time on it" or "I need to go visit my professor's office hours" (sometimes every week...) or "I need to find someone else in class who understands things better and ask for help." It never occurred to me to go to the teacher and say that the material was "too hard", because there was an assumption that someone who is teaching an undergraduate course has a reasonable idea of what undergraduates should be capable of, with sufficient time and diligence. This assumption is especially bolstered if there were people in the class who didn't find the course "too hard".

I guess I find it strange that in response to the thought "This class is very hard", some people's reactions are, instead of being "I must spend more time/effort on it", are "I must ask the teacher to make it easier."

Those who've been in higher academia for any period of time will be familiar with imposter syndrome -- and those who've read my journal for awhile may remember that I wrote about it back in March (even though I'd forgotten about that post until the title showed up in my browser's memory as I started typing the current one!) -- and the constant nagging feeling that you'll be found out as a fraud and excluded from the community you've fought so hard to enter. I spent most of my first year of grad school waiting for someone to take me aside and kindly tell me, "I'm sorry, we made a mistake when we admitted you to the program" (which given the back-and-forth surrounding my acceptance to the program didn't seem all that far-fetched to me). Everyone -- not just the professors, but all the other grad students too -- were so much smarter than me, always had insightful things to say in class, or questions to ask in seminars, while I sat dumbly in the background. I couldn't even console myself with the thought that it was just because they were senior grad students and I was just starting out, because the other four people in my year could do it too -- I was the only one of the five who'd gone straight to grad school after undergrad, they were all 5-10 years older than me, confident, smart, so much smarter than me.

Of course they didn't kick me out of the program, and as the years went on, and we moved to Amsterdam, and I specialized and really began to delve into my subject, some of the worry went away. I distinctly remember, my 2nd or maybe 3rd year in Amsterdam, sitting in on a philosophy of math class Benedikt was teaching, simply because I enjoyed the material and wasn't so deep in the throes of dissertation writing that I couldn't spare 2 hours a week. I didn't bother to do the readings, but still found lots of things to comment on, and suddenly, one day, I realized I had become what I had always feared. I was the senior grad student sitting in the back of the room who knows so much and had the smart comments and questions. I realized the master's students probably felt towards me as I felt years before, and that crystal of recognition, that piece of perspective has helped me quite a bit in the struggle with imposter syndrome since then, because it made me see how irrational it is from an outside perspective.

Of course, it never goes away. Every paper acceptance I get, every time I receive an invitation to speak at a conference, I always wonder if they really just don't understand my research and if they did they'd realize it wasn't worth publishing, wasn't worth inviting me to talk about -- even when continually I manage to get published in some of the foremost venues in my field(s), it seems like a big charade, and someday someone will figure me out.

The pervasiveness of this worry in the face of strong evidence that I have that in fact I DO actually know my field, quite well, and that I DO have interesting insights to share was thrown up in my face early last week, and that was when I realized something really quite strange: When it comes to another area of life, an area where I actually have had far less training and practice, and where the consequences of actually being an imposter, a fraud, or a screw-up are far more lasting and potentially far more damaging, imposter syndrome has almost never reared its head: Parenting.

It stopped me dead in my tracks: Why on earth is it that I have basically never questioned my judgement regarding raising Gwen? That I don't sit and wait for people to discover that I'm incompetent and take her away? I know I'm raising her well, I have no doubts whatsoever that I am an extremely competent parent. I see small evidence of this daily, and as she gets older and interacts with more people, large evidence in the form of people who don't know her (many of the people that were friends of friends at the feast yesterday expressed surprised upon hearing her age, given how self-posssessed and articulate she is). It's not that the doubts arise and I can deal with them in a rational way, but that for the most part, they just don't arise at all. There are a few grand-scale matters that I have faced where the question of "what decision that we make will be the best for Gwen" has seemed incredibly daunting, and the weightiness of how my actions can shape the course of her life and happiness sits fully on me, but I am not worried that we won't be able to determine if not the best option, an option which will not be harmful to her.

I wondered what the difference was, and one natural point of difference is that I have known her day in and day out since she first arrived: I have daily experience with her and being her mother, and thus feel more qualified than pretty much anyone in the world when it comes to her (it's the ultimate Ph.D. project, except that instead of taking 4 years to create it takes 9 months, and instead of being free and clear once the defense/labor is done, your work has only just begun). No one can expose me as a fraud because no one else knows this particular subject matter better than I do.

I don't know if there is any moral to draw here -- if I put as much work into my work as I do into Gwen, would I feel more comfortable in claiming the skills that I claim to have? Or is there an intrinsic difference between being an academic and being a parent such that imposter syndrome just doesn't arise for me regarding one even if it does the other? Or has it just not hit yet -- after all, it never bothered me while I was an undergrad, I was completely confident in my position of "one of the smartest, most talkative people in class". Maybe I just need to wait until I get to the "grad school" portion of being a parent. :)

There's an eColloquium series on argumentation that happens every few months that I've been attending for awhile now. My first one was when I was invited to give a talk in it, and though it took a bit to get used to the wholly novel situation of given a presentation blind, with no audience feedback during the talk, I've warmed up to this style of presentation quite a bit. Every few months I get an early afternoon off, come home, curl up on the couch with a cup of tea (or wine!), cat, and some cookies or chocolate, and get to spend two hours participating in a field that I'm otherwise fringe enough on that I wouldn't seek out too many conferences that I'd have to travel to. Sometimes I have to leave half-way through to get Gwen, sometimes Joel is able to pick her up for me. The last one, Slinky spent most of her time on my lap, and a number of people commented (in the chat section of the conference) about her. Then, Gwen arrived, and I swapped her for the cat, and people remarked on how I changed my cat into a little girl. :) I loved sitting there with her on my lap, continuing to participate in the conference. This, I thought, was a pinacle in work/life balance.

The next installment just ended, and again, I had a bizarre interaction of different facets of my life. Joel said he could pick up Gwen, so I promised to take care of supper -- which means that at the half-way break, I picked up the laptop, webcam, and headphones and headed to the kitchen. Supper prep was pretty much just washing and chopping vegetables (we're having quesadillas), which I was able to do again while continuing to participate in the conference.

It was very weird. I felt so very domestic, and so very academic, all at the same time.

With our trip to Osnabrück last week, Gwen has now hit 5 countries in 5 months (lives in NL; went to Belgium en route to the US at 6 weeks; UK twice in March; then Germany). Between my planned academic traveling and my SCA travel, she'll continue this trend if not better -- next month we're going to Sweden; in June, Switzerland (academic) and then Finland (SCA); in July, perhaps Iceland (SCA); in August, Wales (SCA) and, hopefully, Denmark (academic). My September travel doesn't have any new countries on the itinerary, but I'm still not sure if she'll come with me to Canada in October.

Tarek and I talked quite a bit about academia vs. industry (since he's in cognitive science, industry is at least an option for him, whereas it isn't really for me). We talked about how Joel made his decision to opt for the latter, and that one of the things initially holding him back was the ability to research whatever he was interested in, rather than whatever the company needed. I suggested he use this as a bargaining chip; since Jon and Geoff wanted him to join them pretty badly, I suggested he get them to agree to some sort of system where every few years he can take a few months' sabbatical, just as he would as an academic.

Of course, the other big issue is money. There is no question that industry pays better...much better. But that only goes so far, and in trade for the money, you actually lose the benefit alluded to in my first paragraph: travel. As we commented to each other, jobs in industry are unlikely to pay for you to travel all over to conferences in exotic locations (oh, sure, they'll pay for some conferences...but they aren't going to be nearly as neat or as fun or as well-located as academic ones often are), and not mind if you then skip part of the reason why you're there, whereas at academic conferences, everyone mostly agrees that it's the coffee breaks, the social dinner, and the excursions where the real work get done. The talks are a useful side engagement, but they often are not the most beneficial part of a conference, so there's nothing lost by cherry-picking the ones you go to.

Every time I tally things up, I keep coming to the conclusion that I am doing exactly what I should be doing and that there isn't really a job out there better than this.