Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Well, it's official now. Monday I got my contract letter for Fall 2015 and today, Thursday 16 July 2015, I signed it and turned it in. Sitting in my office, employed once again. Or I will be once things start up in another month or so.

As much as I will be delighted to be back in the classroom, it will be a bit of a shock given the months of this year's Sabbatical. Not that I haven't had time off before, especially these past three summers, but since I've been working so heavily on the YA trilogy+, I won't have all those hours to throw into writing and revising.

Of course, as I have said before, it won't take too much of a YA advance to convince me to go full-time writing, especially with the expense of driving five days a week 154 miles a day and 2½ tanks of gas a week.

I am a part-time instructor. Adjunct. And actually we're doing pretty good with having the PTO union. But at the same time, it's not that they pay me all that much.

For Fall 2015 I am teaching two four-credit classes. Part-timers can't teach more than nine credits a semester. For this I am being paid $850/credit hour, $3400/class.

$6800 for the Fall 2015 semester.

Since I, on purpose, did not teach during Spring (Winter) 2015 semester or Summer-I/II 2015 sessions, this will be my entire 2015 taxable salary.

Right now I am scheduled for one class for the Spring (Winter) 2016 semester, the PHYS-3090 Modern Physics course, which will be great fun. But of course I'll be making even less.

Fortunately Mrs. Dr. Phil is okay with this. But she'd also be happy if I didn't do so much driving, especially in the winter.

Some of this reverie is stuff I've been talking about for a long time -- it's just with the YA-trilogy+ foaming over the edge of its petri dish and starting to rise into a real thing, I've probably thought about it more often than before. And then today there was a marvelous post from my author friend Jim C. Hines announcing he's going to full-time writing, which in his case is because he's got enough success to make it work. Go, Jim, go!

Before I got sick in 2013, I had realized that I actually had a chance to do enough time to get a small pension out of the 20+ years of part-time teaching. Now, having had to take time off and not always having classes, I'm not so sure that the pension vesting is practical anymore.

We shall see...

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

I'm adjunct. I don't get sabbaticals, unless I want to declare one.

So we've been talking about this for a while and today I did it. I am not going to teach for Spring (i.e. Winter) 2015. You might think it's a little late, but as per usual, adjunct contracts go out late.

You might think it's all about the weather. And that's a factor. I managed to soldier in last winter, except for the odd snow day and a vehicle failure, but that was when we thought the errant heel was healing.

So late last night I sent my boss the following in an email:

We haven't talked about 2015 courses since last summer. I think I commented at the time that we wouldn't know until December or January or so whether the bone infection in my left heel has been beaten back or not -- I am just finishing up the six months of antibiotics in the next two weeks. If they were going to have to amputate, I was happy to teach in Fall 2014 and take Spring (i.e. Winter) 2015 off.

Well, it's still too early, but we've already had a taste of a hard winter in November -- 31" in Grand Rapids or 40% of the whole 2013-14 snow season. While I soldiered in last winter, that was when we thought we had normal healing going on.

I think it's best that I "take a sabbatical" for Spring 2015 and keep off my foot as much as possible. And if they need me to have surgery, there's plenty of time for recovery and rehab. Otherwise I would still try to keep some weekly office hours, subject to weather, and whatever happens, I should be able to teach Summer I and Summer II 2015 if there are courses available ***. I really would hate to start teaching and then have my foot blow up and leave the department and my students in the lurch. Being pro-active and taking the time off is the best solution for all concerned.

Now most people would be bummed to not work and lose the money, but I'm not most people. First of all, with my long commute and its costs, it's not like I really make anything on my adjunct salary. So teaching or not is practically a wash for our budget. And I'm an optimist. Having the time at home AND not having to face the wintry roads for months will not only be nice, it's really nice for Mrs. Dr. Phil.

And I can really rest the heel. And if it goes? Well, I won't be missing anything.

So I have declared Spring 2015, my 69th semester of university work, as my Sabbatical 2.0. What shall I do with this time? The obvious thing is write. Have not done a lot of submissions in 2014, though I am writing up a storm on my YA series -- 113,000 words so far and counting -- which means I've written more this year that in the last several years combined.

But... while I was talking to my department chair today, he happened to glance at my PHYS-1070 textbook, Inquiry Into Physics / Vern J. Ostdiek and Donald J. Bord (7th Edition), and asked what I thought about it. The thing is, it's not a bad textbook for an all-of-physics-algebra-level-in-one-semester class. But Chapter One sucks. I mean, if you had a GOOD high school Physics or AP Physics class, the first chapter is a nice review. But I have to assume we are starting at ground zero and working our way up. I spend weeks bringing everyone up to speed on just the first chapter. And then I extend the material, so the students end up with the kinematic equations as we use in PHYS-1130 and the calc level PHYS-2050. This allows them to talk to other students or people working the Help Room and get help they can understand.

I once spent two hours talking to a company rep about exactly what was wrong with that chapter. Years ago. It hasn't changed.

I've taught PHYS-1070 and its earlier variants a total of 28 times now. Early on we were using Hewitt's Conceptual Physics, which is too light. And we've been using Ostdiek & Bord since about the 3rd edition, I think. Other professors have taught PHYS-1070 over the years, and no one has found a "good" textbook. There just aren't many suitable for this course.

I've even thought about writing my own textbook.

So I told my boss I was going to rewrite my syllabus over my sabbatical and that I was thinking of using the full-year algebra level textbook, especially as we are currently using a loose-leaf edition which means we can pull just the sections we are going to use. And then my boss points out that actually, PHYS-1130/1150 is switching to a new text, one available for free and published with a Creative Commons license. Huh.

Bottom line, during my sabbatical of six months or so, I will also be taking that online text apart and figuring out the sections we need for PHYS-1070. Perhaps get the authors permissions to edit down the PDFs. And so I'm penciled in for PHYS-1070 for the 29th time in Fall 2015, where I will field trial the new text.

And we'll see how it goes. (grin)

What. Fun.

Now, just need to make it through December 16th and the noon grading deadline, followed by half a dozen doctors appointments... (evil-grin)

Dr. Phil

It's That Time Of The Year

Yes, I've not been posting much lately on LiveJournal/Dreamwidth. Hell, I haven't been posting much on Facebook, either.

The reason, of course, is that it's the end of Fall semester. Final Exams were last week, the last week of class rush the week before. And now it's Grading Week, that abbreviated period that ends with the Death Clock running out Tuesday at Noon. (grin)

So I haven't given up on blogging. I'm not ignoring you. I'm just up to my armpits in grading papers.

Dr. Phil

Happy Canada Day!

It's July 1st and that begins a whole month of national holidays.

As For June... And May...

Oh yeah, I've been teaching. (grin) Teaching in the summer is like driving a race car instead of a suburban commute. All the material, half the time, half the weekends, all the quizzes -- every day in fact -- and it's a whirlwind.

So as for why I've been scarcer on LJ than I'd like, well, now you know. Of course this is now officially Grading Weekend. Because Tuesday was the Final Exam and yesterday, Thursday, I got the finals back from the grader. So we're down to grading two-and-a-half quizzes, the Topic 1 Science Literacy Book Reports and the Topic 2 Real World Driving Data Worksheets. Good news? Only 37 in the class.

But I Am Behind

Had composed a number of LJ posts in my head while driving to/fro K-zoo, but of course that doesn't count. Not until we get John Scalzi's BrainPals installed.

So... later.

Dr. Phil

It's The Same Everywhere

The nation is busy on a budget cutting spree from the national level to the local townships. The economic meltdown and high unemployment means that tax revenues are down everywhere. And while the economy is doing a few rumblings of recovery, there are still plenty of people and industries and communities in difficulty. Into this environment, the conservative swing in government is in part taking the form of swinging the budget cutting axes.

As For Michigan...

The November 2010 elections swept in Republican control of the state house, senate and governor's mansion. While that doesn't mean an automatic pass on any legislation, the good news is that I expect there to be a lot less fighting to come up with something that can be passed -- though the jury is still out as to whether the One Tough Nerd new governor will sign just anything out of the state legislature.

Rick Snyder's first budget was supposed to have been announced about half an hour ago, though the details were given to news organizations late last night.

It sounds like there will be a 3-4% cut in school support and a 15% cut in state university support. The latter sounds like a lot, and it's not chump change, but it isn't quite the bad news that it looks like.

First, state support of the universities has been either declining or holding even for years, so that the state part of the universities budgets has been steadily dwindling. Second, I'm not sure if this includes the moratorium on (most) new construction projects. That's already sent the universities scrambling to raise donor funds for their building projects and so is a known issue.

I'm sure some of the universities will deal with this tightening of the money spigot better than others. I'm expecting that WMU will still be needing to teach courses even in the face of belt tightening, so I am assuming for the moment that I will have work beyond the end of April.

It's not a time to panic. Yet. And a budget is at this stage merely a proposal.

We'll see.

Dr. Phil

Monday

Drove into the office on Monday of Grading Week. Though the university will close between Christmas and New Year's and they are threatening very cold temps in the buildings with the new thermostat controls in place, it was surprisingly warm in my office. Yay. I've had years when I was waiting for the grader and it was too cold to think, write or type.

Actually, before I got to the office I stopped at the WMU Parking Office to get a new parking sticker. Yeah, as a part-timer I have to get one of these every semester. Except... the clerk was having trouble getting the right menu item and so snagged a passing uniformed Public Safety officer. Turns out as part of the new part-time instructors union, I get to have a regular parking hang tag. Yay! Actually, it's a GH grad student tag -- the contract was accepted too late for Public Safety to make part-timer hang tags for 2010-2011. But this will be really handy, especially on days when I have to drive a different vehicle.

Meanwhile, my erstwhile grader managed to get the final exams and quizzes 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 into my mailbox. Triple-Yay! Nothing like having the papers back and not gnawing the insides of my cheeks waiting for the grader to show, and also inputting the scores and not having to drag papers home. And have them cluttering the house until January.

Monday Night

I had one old pesky quiz to grade, then curve the final, massage the grades. And found myself ready to input the final grades at 11pm. Usually on a school night we'd be tucking in the kitties downstairs, but with vacations looming, I started right in. Later in the night I posted the grade breakdowns on the class webpage. By the time I went to bed I was totally done for my Fall 2010 class. And it wasn't even 11:58am on Tuesday!!! (grin)

Tuesday

Play! I'm off now. Mrs. Dr. Phil is on vacation this week. So we headed off to Celebration Cinema North to see Tron Legacy in IMAX 3D and Harry Potter 7.1. Reviews coming, but it was a fun afternoon.

Now... writing to do.

Dr. Phil

That Smell? It's Finals Fear

It's Finals Week here at Western Michigan University. Finals are two hours long and close packed together with a whole fifteen minutes between sessions. The very first time slot was Monday 8-10am. And guess what? That was the scheduled time for my PHYS-2050 MTWRF 9am class.

Now this is good news, because statistically students do better when the Final falls in their normal class time, which this does. Bad news, because who the hell wants to have a Final at 8am in the bloody morning? For me, I had decided long ago that it would be easier if I would just drive down to K-zoo on Sunday afternoon and stay overnight in a motel, rather than trying to get up at 4am and then driving down in the dark. This plan looked to be real genius as the big Midwest winter storm rolled through.

Not The Walloping That Minneapolis or Syracuse Got

But during the weekend it rained. Sunday morning the roads were wet and the temp still just above freezing. By 2pm, the temps were 25°F and dropping, and it was starting to snow lightly -- and the winds were picking up. Overnight a couple of inches was forecast, along with gusting over 40mph and zero-ish wind chills. Temps were going to be in the teens, below the effective temperature for the road salt chemicals. Peachy. When I left, the roads were already shiny -- you could get up to speed, but stopping was clearly an adventure, as were poorly advised high speed turns onto the highway from the side streets that I kept seeing. The anti-lock brakes chattered every time I had to slow for a stop light. Gear it down, 4WD, no driving like an idiot -- and it worked pretty well.

The communities right along the lakeshore have been repeatedly clobbered by lake effect snows. But some ten miles inland in Allendale, mostly all we've gotten is to see this wall of snow clouds off to the west.

Made It, Now What?

Eventually made it to Kalamazoo, mostly 10-15 mph below the posted speed limits -- only saw one accident on the side of the road. Before I'd left home I'd printed out the Kalamazoo 10 movie schedule, as that multiplex is just across the road from the Super 8 I was going to stay at. I'd hoped that maybe RED was still playing, as Mrs. Dr. Phil had seen it with her mom a while ago and I hadn't. But no. However, I checked into my room at 4:15pm and had plenty of time to make a 4:45pm showing of Tangled, the new Disney Rapunzel movie -- very cute. Came out of the theatre and had to brush off about two inches of very, very fine diamond dust snow off one side of the vehicle.

I'd gone ahead and made a reservation -- it was $49.44 at the Super 8 Motel site with AAA... and $50 at Motels.com -- but there may have been only one other guest staying there, based on the cars parked. (grin) Super 8 isn't a posh chain, but it's adequate. The Panasonic TV had a Zenith remote, probably with the wrong code number, as the volume controls worked but not the change channel. The room had one of those window A.C. units with a space heater in it -- the TV needed the volume up to 13 when the fan was on, 4-6 when it was off. Luckily, I did have the remote volume control. (double-jeopardy-grin) Watched some football, saw the finale of The Amazing Race and a new Series III Inspector Lewis on PBS.

There were a couple of tables and chairs in the lobby for the advertised continental breakfast. If you liked dehydrated blueberries, you had your choice of blueberry bagels or blueberry muffins. They had one of those close-and-flip circular waffle makers, but no batter and no one around. The cereal choices looked to be no-name Fruity-Ohs and nondescript corn flakages. I had a bagel with Philadelphia cream cheese. The guy in the white pickup I thought was the other guest pulled up to the door, came in and piled four muffins in a foam cereal bowl, and left. It was something. If I was desperate for a "real" breakfast, I could've driven five buildings down to the 24-hour Steak-n-Shake, which would've done fine real pancakes, but I passed. Besides, I bring cookies to my exams -- and name brand cookies for Finals.

A Clear Windy Dawn

I was prepared to dig the Blazer out in the morning, but not a lot of snow actually fell overnight. And the winds pretty much kept the windows clear. I thought the window washer jets were frozen, but later found that I was just out of blue fluid. Overhead was sparkling clear. Despite the bitter cold, the actual main streets were clear and wet. Side streets were slippery. I'd worried about what time they'd open the buildings up. But I got in around 7:20am and found both the classroom and the offices buildings unlocked, so didn't have to play ID card roulette and find out if my ID card was or was not currently programmed to open the doors after hours. (As a part-timer, they are always deleting us after one semester, but sometimes after they've added us for the new semester.)

And my finals were copied and left in the lock-up as expected. And amazingly, 52 students were there at 8am, out of 56 who'd taken Exam 3. 1 showed up at 8:10, and I knew 1 student was stuck in the U.P. with a breakdown and no mechanics open on the weekend. Of course I told everyone the storm was coming and that they shouldn't go out of town for the weekend, but they never listen to Dr. Phil. That errant student is taking his final as I type -- he's got about 17 minutes to go.

By the time I was heading back to Allendale at 2:30pm, it was blue skies, bright sunshine and dry main roads. Still a ground hugging vision of snow clouds off at the Lake Michigan shore, but we weren't getting the snow on Monday.

Now it's all over except for the grading. (triple-word-score-grin)

Dr. Phil

I've Been Pretty Scarce Online Lately

This should've been a week full of activities, including finishing posting about the Olympics and other stuff. And writing. Lots of writing. Alas, twas not to be. And -- ack! -- it's all my fault:

I've got a list of way too many things to do next week. But after Monday, the weather looks sunny and warm -- in the upper 30s -- for the rest of the week. So we'll see what I can accomplish. And at the moment, I don't have a cold and my sinuses are in much better shape than the last couple of years.

I always seem to get sick over breaks. I should never have mentioned I was healthy.

February Ends

Last Sunday I got up and soon found that it was uncomfortable to sit up in a straight chair. Some sort of intestinal thing made me very bloated and gassy and feeling constipated. And all that was putting pressure on a nerve or strain on a muscle. Dammit.

See -- let's look at the things I wanted to accomplish during Spring Break: Writing on the computer. Sorting and cleaning papers on the dining room table. Ditto for the kitchen desk, which suffered an avalanche over Christmas. Driving around on errands to a couple of places. Going out during the day for a movie or two. Setting up one of the small portable computers on the kitchen counter with the external CD-ROM drive and doing some software installs. Grading some quizzes I brought home with me. Or driving down to K-zoo this weekend to see some of the U.S. National Curling Championships. (!!)

Guess which ones of those activities involve sitting up straight? Yup. All of them.

A Week of Minimal Results

Three weeks before I had something intestinal for a day. But this was dragging on, so Monday I called and got an appointment with the doctor for Tuesday. Wasn't running a fever. And after a long time, finally got some "movement" going in the old lower GI tract. But whatever tweaked or strained that muscle was doing some lingering. As is typical, best way to feel better is to make a doctor's appointment. He checked all manner of things, but no real culprits stood out. Basic GI upset likely to be some sort of a virus. And I hadn't even gone on a Caribbean cruise! (snort) Still not 100%, but I can sit and type now. Did drive up to Chevy on Thursday and get an oil change on the 1996 Blazer and I spent Friday afternoon wandering off to Holland MI on errands.

So a few things got checked off on my Things To Do list late during Spring Break.

The Good News

But really, this is all rather good news for me. Because think of it. Imagine spending most of a week being hideously uncomfortable trying to drive an hour and a half each way, sitting in the office being stiff and in pain. Or worse, not being able to teach. Much better for my students for this to happen during a scheduled down period anyway. Which is why I am always a big fan of serendipity.

And frankly, the weather has been mostly blue sky and bright sun and temps in the upper 30s and low 40s all week, as the thick ice in the driveway has slowly eroded and melted away. Pretty. Restoring for the spirit, I imagine. (grin)

But I'm annoyed at the lack of writing time. That's lost time which is hard to recover. Dammit. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Buyer's Remorse?

I hate trying to call a snow day 24 hours in advance. About the half the time it's an easy call -- as the university ends up agreeing with me. (grin) My theory on Tuesday was "if the roads were this bad before the bulk of the snow fell and the wind picked up tonight, that the roads were going to be bad and worse on Wednesday". And Tuesday night the roads were filled with slideoffs and crashes.

This morning at 6:30am it didn't seem so bad outside, but there were still more than six hours left to the advisories. I-94 near Kalamazoo, which admittedly I don't have to go as far as, ended up closed in two places due to crashes, including one with three semi-trucks with one overturned. Kalamazoo Valley Community College, out by I-94 and Ninth Street, closed last night and canceled classes today as well. But KVCC really is pretty isolated and the winds can be dreadful out there.

At one point WGVU was listing nearly 200 school closures. Allendale, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo schools closed. But school snow days were also a function that today was scheduled to be the schools' second Count Day -- the census of numbers of students attending determines 25% of their next year's funding. The state sent out a memo to school administrators yesterday that they could postpone Count Day by a day if the weather warranted it. I'm sure some of the schools wanted to avoid anything which could diminish their census count.

By 9am, there was bright sun shining in through my living room window. Did I make a mistake? Well, I know from the traffic reports up to 9am that the major highways were reduced to one lane each way. And from previous winters, I can safely predict that the wind they were reporting would be crossing those lanes from east to west, adding to the slipperiness.

So... I probably could've made it to the office today, and certainly back home at night. But I don't know how messy it was in Kalamazoo yet or the problems my students would have getting in to class. And with 4½ hours of driving yesterday, it certainly seemed to be a trend.

Do I feel bad for declaring a Personal Snow Day? Hell no. Sometimes you have to make a call.

Anyway, It Doesn't Matter

The real news is that part of this storm which is hammering the East Coast again. Poor Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia getting whomped on a second time, and I guess New York City will be dumped on this time. Michigan, which can only report some snow, a lot of wrecks and slideoffs and three deaths -- is old news.

Dr. Phil

The Calm Before The Storm?

West Michigan has missed several of the storms which have swept across the country since Christmas. This past weekend, West Virginia, Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia got hammered with a couple of feet of snow -- and may get another round. Grand Rapids saw a little flakeage out that big storm, but Allendale didn't even get the flakes. It all tracked south of us.

So today was a hazy blue sky sunny day. Started out at 16°F or so, warmed up to near 32°F. Roads clear and dry. Parking lots still have some ice in areas and our driveway has a good ice and snow layer base. Otherwise, 2WD all the way. Ah, but not all of life is sunshine and hazy blue skies. The next storm will be getting us.

This is not to one up all those areas who've been clobbered this winter. But it makes it difficult to plan for my classes this week. Decided that Quiz 7, which had been due on Tuesday, is now due on Thursday. Don't want anyone injured or inconvenienced just to get one 15,000 point quiz in. Besides, it involves a six capacitor network reduction problem -- they probably can use the extra time. (grin)

So our Winter Weather Advisory, now upgraded to a Winter Weather Watch, starts at 7am on Tuesday morning and runs til 1pm on Wednesday afternoon. Grand Rapids is in the 8-10" total band, while Kalamazoo could get 12-14". Winds could be 25-40mph Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Tuesday's commute and teaching should be okay. But with the winds, I'm not so sure about Wednesday. I'd cancel classes now, even if WMU didn't close, except West Michigan weather is so capricious. So we'll see...

It Was A Very Pleasant Day

Blue and Sam, our remaining pair of cats, were very nice today. Extra snuggles in the morning, evening and when we put them to bed in the kitty room downstairs. They've been having some sneezing from a kitty cold, but they both seem to be getting better. Purr-rrrrr.

No doubt they want us to have a snow day on Wednesday, too. (double-grin)

Dr. Phil