OK, this is just what I don't want to see in my email: information specifically directed to CAST (contract academic staff: teaching) about "career transitions." In other words: What to do when you are canned. Wow, how classy!
This document was prepared by Employee & Family Assistance Program (motto: "Healthy people, healthy workplace"), which is a part of the UofA's Human Resource Services. (The PDF document properties actually includes the name of the person who created it, but I don't want to embarrass her. That would not be classy.) It includes a lovely pastoral scene of a road stretching off far into the potential with opportunity trees providing gentle, sun-dappled prospect shade. Although I can't quite see what's off in the distance. Is it possibility? Promise?
Let's go through this document. Hmm, "Resume Writing, Interview Preparation." (I don't have a resume, I have a curriculum vitae, thank you very much. Sniff.) "Financial Consultation Service," "Career Consultation Service." Oooh, hey, lookit, "Counseling Services." I get to talk to a counselor about losing my job! That will help with my well-being! Er, but only for 3 months. (I guess after that, I will have gotten a job. Or I won't be depressed any more. Right?)
Now, to be fair (which I don't have to be, whyshouldI?), the Career Transition & Job Loss web page does have similar documents to this for other constituency groups: Career Transition Services for Support Staff, Career Transition Services for Administrative Professional Staff, Career Transition Services for Academic Staff. But somehow I doubt that anyone else got sent a blanket email distributing their career transition resources. Just contract academic staff.
Needless to say, getting this document freaked me out. A lot. Is this some sort of hint? Like showing the chicken the hatchet? Or was it a just-in-case sort of thing? Maybe HRS realizes that CAST will likely be the first choice in many departments to get cut. Despite my oft-demonstrated superior teaching skills (toot! tooting my own horn, toot!) when it comes down to money, sorry bub, you're the low man on the totem pole.
I did go and talk to some people about this. What I heard was reassuring: they don't want to get rid of me (or other contract staff in the Department), and they're trying to find other ways to save money--but, of course, nothing is guaranteed. So, I'm going to be a bit antsy until (if!?) my contract is renewed at the end of the summer. Yeah, I have to wait that long. Hey, look what's in my email. A notice that MacEwan University is hiring a lecturer in psychology. Excuse me while I go and prepare my resume...
Why aren't you studying?
Career Transition
The End of Term
In one of my classes this term
, I finished my lectures with time to spare. In the other two, I was so far behind, I had to skip content (which I hate to do) and talk really fast (which I really hate to do).
I try to make lectures fill the time available. That's not easy when I've got a new lecture: I don't know how long it'll take exactly. Maybe students will have lots of questions, or maybe my PowerPoint slides are confusing and I have to make up for it with a lot of top-of-my-head explaining. On the other hand, it could be deadly boring, and I'll rip through it just to put an end to everyone's misery.
One thing that helps is showing videos in class--for a number of reasons. They're great buffers. Running short of time? Cut the videos. Lots of time to spare? Show them all. Of course, I'd always like to show all the videos, because I believe there's some educational value in hearing people explain their theories in her own words. Especially if they're, er, dead now. I still have fond memories of some of the interesting videos that were shown in the classes I took as an undergrad.
Despite cutting out some videos, things didn't work out this term. But I know why: not all terms are created equal. For example, Tuesday/Thursday courses can have 25 or 26 classes during a Fall or Winter term. That's a difference of 80 minutes, which is a lot of lecture. It's even worse for Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday classes, which can have 36, 37, or even 38 classes--creating a maximum difference of 100 minutes.
Beyond showing videos, I really don't know how else to handle this variability. Should I create more lecture material and only use it some terms? But is that fair to the students who enroll in a different term and are "deprived" of some of my wonderful lectures? Should I just rip through it all when I'm short of classes in a given term? Or should I just try and fill the minimum amount of time, and then cancel any extraneous classes? (Why am I even asking this? Believe it or not, some students do not want profs to cancel any classes--they want to get as much of the time they paid for as possible.)
I'm looking forward to Spring term because the number of classes is always reliably the same. Although the amount of time I have to lecture in Spring is actually less than a Fall or Winter course. *sigh*
Why aren't you studying?
The Importance of Sleep, Again
What's worse is that I've been reading a lot of really good research showing just how important it is to get a good night's sleep. The Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) has an annual meeting showcasing a huge amount of interesting work on sleep. At their meeting in June, 2009, one study in particular caught my eye (and the attention of some journalists and bloggers). It was found that sleep quality (not quantity, per se) was correlated with math scores. That is, the better your sleep, the better your scores on math exams. English scores went up, too. You don't think you can affect the quality of sleep you get? Sure you can: sleep on a regular schedule, don't pull all-nighters, and don't have a baby who wakes up every couple of hours. (OK, maybe that last one is a bit hard to do.)
Sleep also has been shown to aid memory: "Sleeping on it" may just be the best way to remember something. And in another widely reported finding, sleep quality turned out to be important for learning in general, and for learning vocabulary in particular. Ya, more gooder sleeps does to help your talking goodly-like and knowing the betterer words.
Ugh, I need a nap.
Why aren't you studying?
Baklava!
That's a picture of my baklava to the left there. To get my mind off feeling sick and miserable, I decided to make baklava. Sure, I could easily stop by Paradiso Pastries (11318 134 Avenue) on the way home. But there's just something about creating using your own hands.
I'm a fan of the blog dinner with Julie, written by a (*choke*) Calgary mom, cookbook author, radio personality, caterer, and (obviously) blogger. Coincidentally, she also made baklava recently (I made mine first). I've made a few of her recipes, but this time I just wanted to get rid of some phyllo I've had in the freezer since, well, er...since before my kids were born. It was still good, amazingly.
My recipe came from my main man, Alton Brown. I thought his recipe was interesting, using three different kinds of nuts. Instead of walnuts, though, I opted for cashews. Also, to put a Canadian spin on it, I added some maple syrup to the honey syrup. Yum!
How does this relate to psychology? Well, I am talking about the psychology of food and eating in my Advanced Perception course, and I'll be talking about hunger, eating, and weight in intro psych soon. Hmm, after eating all this baklava, maybe I go and weigh myself...
Why aren't you studying?
The Laryngitis
I'm sorry for the state of my voice this week. I know I sound like a frog with, um, a frog in its throat.
I was hit by a particularly nasty virus (picked up from my oldest daughter, via daycare or school, grr!) that decided to settle in my lungs, turning into a lower respiratory tract infection--likely pneumonia--activating my asthma, and giving me bronchitis. The result of all this was a cough that was so bad that my wife took her pillow and went to sleep in a different room. Wearing earplugs.
I started taking antibiotics for the infection, and maxed out on daily doses of inhaled steroids to open my airways. Unfortunately (I am coming to a point here, really; this isn't just about me describing my illness, honestly), one of the side effects is a hoarse voice. Or, in extreme cases, laryngitis: an inflammation of the larynx, which includes the vocal apparatus. Hence, my sounding like a goat that's eaten, um, a Smart Car. Wait, that doesn't even make sense. Did I mention I've got a fever, too? But look, you're learning all about parts of the body. Yay!
I always try my best to work through whatever illness I've got. It would be nice to put up my feet at home, and snuggle into an easy chair with a bowl of chicken soup to watch Oprah. But I don't see that as being professional. If I miss a class (or two, or three), that throws a monkey wrench into my schedule. Do I cut things out of the lecture? Do I just talk really, really fast to get through it all? Both of those are not fair to students--the paying customers. So, the show must go on.
Obviously, if my voice goes completely, I've got to give up. So complete laryngitis is one of the few things that will keep me out of the classroom. The others are explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting. Of those three, I'd pick laryngitis.
So, what do you think? Should I stay at home with Oprah, or try and croak through my lectures?
Why aren't you studying?
Anatomy of a Lecture: Part 3
So far, I’ve talked about deciding on a new lecture topic, and the prep work that went into it. This time, I’ve got a collection of links to websites on synesthesia. I know I promised a “ridiculous” number of links, but these aren’t all the resources I used; I’m not going to link you to scientific journal articles, and, er, I can’t link to an actual book. Still, there’s lots of good stuff out there (and it’s not overly technical).
Tests: Think you’ve got synesthesia? Take one of these tests and find out for sure (the first one is a “real” test, the others are not so hot).
- The Synesthesia Battery is David Eagleman’s rigorous, standardized test of synesthesia
- Synaesthesia Toolkit from Multisense Synaesthesia Research lab, directed by Prof. Julia Simner at the University of Sussex
- Synesthesia tests has a number of different, um, synesthesia tests (unfortunately, it’s in poorly translated English)
- Synesthesia Test assesses your grapheme → colour synesthesia (but if you simply click on the same colour over and over though, it hilariously thinks you have synesthesia!)
- animator Samantha Moore's video An Eyeful of Sound represents her visual experience of sounds, in collaboration with Dr Jamie Ward
- a sort-of simulation of grapheme → colour synesthesia: type letters and watch them change colours
- a strange Java applet that turns visual images into sound, called The vOICe
- here’s a musical sketch pad that turns your drawings into sound
- experience sound generated from watercolour paintings by an artist
- the Music Animation Machine lets you turn any piece of music into a coloured visual display
- I think the best one so far was produced by the BBC series Horizon, called “Derek Tastes of Earwax” (love that title). It also aired in the US as “When Senses Collide” and “When Senses Overlap” (available on YouTube)
- ResearchChannel has another good one, called Red Mondays and Gemstone Jalapeños: The Synesthetic World (available on YouTube). BoingBoing has an abridged version as well (available on YouTube).
- Another Discovery Channel show, One Step Beyond, has a brief video on synesthesia that features interviews with David Eagleman and noted synesthete Sean Day (available on HowStuffWorks).
- The Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast has an episode on Synesthesia
- Everyday fantasia: The world of synesthesia from the APA Monitor
- “Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes” by V.S. Ramachandran and E. M. Hubbard in Scientific American
- Do you see what they see? from Discover Magazine
- The Most Beautiful Painting You’ve Ever Heard from SEED magazine
- Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia - on Richard Cytowic’s website
- Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia - on David Eagleman’s website
- The Frog Who Croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses - by Jamie Ward
(related animations are on YouTube) - Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant - by Daniel Tammet
- Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens by Patricia Lynne Duffy is an older book
Websites by/for/about synesthetes: Sometimes, it’s best to hear what synesthesia is like first-hand, from those who experience it.
- Sean Day’s Synesthesia website
- The Synesthesia Tree
- r/Synesthesia Reddit
- otherthings.com
- Synaesthesia.com
- sensequence
- the Wikipedia article on synesthesia is actually pretty good--honestly (so is the page on synesthesia in art)
- the Scholarpedia article on synesthesia is also quite good
- and then there’s the synesthesia article at The Psychology Wiki
- Go Cognitive has a series of interview videos with researcher Jamie Ward
- Scientific American answers the question, What is synesthesia?
- Ramachandran and Hubbard answer some questions about synesthesia
- Ramachandran’s Reith Lecture on BBC radio, titled “Purple numbers and sharp cheese”
- Ramachandran’s TED lecture includes some of his work on synesthesia
- Crossing Sensory Boundaries from Wired Science discusses synesthesia and binding
- Educational Neuroscience Lab -- Ed Hubbard's lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Eagleman Lab -- at Stanford University
- David Eagleman -- personal website
- Synaesthesia Research -- at University of Sussex (Jamie Ward)
- until Scholarpedia's article on qualia is ready, you might as well start at Wikipedia
- here's a very brief introduction
- now, here's a whole website devoted to qualia: The Qualia Manifesto
- finally, here's a really long paper on the qualia of colour experience
Why aren't you studying?
(12/31/2023: Links updated)
How to Get Free Marks
You want free marks? Sure, no problem--all you have to do is prove to me that I'm wrong.
It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Earlier this term, Melissa T. asked me why the teaching assistant had marked an answer wrong on one of her assignments. She had written an alternative answer that sounded plausible to me, so I told her about my free mark policy. Melissa came back a couple of days later with a strong journal article supporting her point, and she ended up with a free mark! (To be fair, my TA stuck to the marking guide I provided, so it's not the TA's fault Melissa initially lost a mark. It's impossible to create a marking guide that covers every possible answer, and every variation on an answer. But that's another post for another day.)
You might have learned something in another one of your classes that contradicts what I say (or what the textbook says). This shouldn't be surprising--"facts" change all the time in science. (Like, old-time doctors used to prescribe smoking. And cocaine. Nice going, stupid old-time doctors!) The instructor of one of your other classes might be up on some brand-new study that hasn't worked its way into the textbook I use, into my lectures, and into my exams. So why should you be penalized for knowing more? Or, perhaps, for knowing something in more detail?
So, to get a free mark, all you have to is:
- find an error in the marking of an exam or assignment (sorry, no free marks for correcting an error in the textbook--that is worth $2, however--and no free marks for pointing out an error in my lectures, although you will have my genuine gratitude)
- find good (i.e., peer-reviewed, primary source) evidence to support your answer (sorry, Googling some random website or even finding empirical evidence cited in a textbook is not good enough--it's got to make it through the peer-review process)
- find current evidence (sorry, digging up a peer-reviewed paper from 1847 may not qualify if subsequent research has undermined it)
- give me your supporting evidence at least one day before the final exam
Why aren't you studying?
Find It
