Today is also the first day of Spring in Australia and it’s about damn time. We don’t have snow or frost but we get an endless barrage of rain and the other thing we don’t have is central heating. It is grey and rainy again today but the hope of sunshine and days at the beach in the not too distant keeping me sane in these lingering days of muddy kids and nights spent huddled around the fire.

This blog has been another victim of my career affair. My last post was nearly a month ago. And the only reason I’ve made the time today is fatherly guilt over missing the birthday of one of my spawn. And all I’ve really got in me, with a diesel fuel headache and a stunning view of endless red dirt and scraggly gum trees is a feeble family update.

We’re getting a new dog. Because of what happened with our last dog, we’ve opted for the dull, but reliably family friendly, Labrador Retriever. When asked to choose between the two handsome fellows to the right, Boy Z chose, as boys do, ‘the BIG one’. Apparently he’s going to be called “Woody” (as in Toy Story). But that’s better than “Wags”, which was Boy Z’s original preference.

Speaking of Wags, I’m going to climb out on to the loser limb and tell you how much I’m enjoying The Wiggles. Maybe it is my love of my new home, but these four aging Aussie gents and their ‘animal’ posse make me smile. And they do make one feel like dancing. One of the joys of being housebound in a rainy Australian winter evening is the joy that comes from dancing to “Old Dan Tucker” with the boys. That being said, if I have to watch the tea party song one more time, I might just change my opinion. Boy Z’s going to see The Wiggles when they come to Adelaide with his Nana and I’ve got to admit that I’m a little jealous.

I’m done. In more than one way, actually. I’m coming down with one of the endless string of winter ailments that the boys bring home and sitting here in the Whyalla visiting faculty office I’m just out of steam. The early morning lectures, working at home late into the evenings, the travel and the hundreds of students have just gotten me to the point that I’m ready to collapse. Sixteen days until Spring Break.

But Happy Birthday, Boy #2. We’ve had kind of a rough road, the two of us, but I still get a big smile from you every time I walk into a room so I think we’re bonding a bit. A year in. Sorry to miss this one, but I’m pretty sure you’re not going to remember it. And we’ve got heaps more to come.

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The Wiggles “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” is available from .

Today is also the first day of Autumn in Australia and appropriately the first day of a new semester. I spent a good part of the summer herding failing nursing students through their first and second year subjects and most of the one week break between semesters listening to twice-failed nursing students beg for mercy. The new semester is going to be a bear. A grizzly. A kodiak. I’m involved in teaching six different courses. Those of you who teach secondary school will have little sympathy for me, but for a delicate university lecturer this is a crippling load. I’m also taking a couple of courses for my back up plan.

I recently started working toward a back up plan B, which involves me keeping the job I’m in by doing what the university wants me to do – produce research and research money. I’ve started tinkering around in an immunology lab, hoping to pull some quick publications out of my…hat. I’m not an immunologist. But I’m also not a pathologist and that hasn’t stopped me teaching pathology, nor has the fact that I’m not an anatomist stopped me teaching anatomy. Etc. My real enemy is the time, or lack therof, in the day to fit in all these back up plans as well as doing the job for which I was hired. I fear that things are going to start to suffer. Like this blog.

What the hell? This was supposed to be about Not Max and here I am blathering on about me. Shut up, Chris.

Happy un-birthday, boy #2, the neglected one, laughing boy. Keep working at it and you’re bound to get you father’s attention over the next six months.

Finally,  I couldn’t resist this photo of Boy Z. He’s learned to trust his cape.

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This is the second track from R.E.M.’s 2001 album “Reveal”. I’ve never thought of it a a great R.E.M. album, but it’s sounded pretty good this summer. As an aside, one of my students told me that R.E.M. was “old people’s music” last week, to which I responded with a suggestion that she could kiss my backside.  R.E.M.’s “Reveal” is available from .

Thursday morning, my Head of School knocked on the door of my office as I was taking off my coat. I invited him in to have a seat and the solemn look on his face nearly made me wilt. I’ve been living on annual contracts with the university since I got here and October is contract renewal time. They seem to like me around here because this year they basically created a new position for me, wrote the job description to suit my experience. But the position had to be advertised and based on my Head’s cloudy demeanor, I thought that maybe that had found someone more me than me.

I guess he was just having a bad morning, or perhaps was employing that notorious arid Australian wit, because the news he had for me was all good. I’ve got another year of teaching work at the university. Another year doing a job I love. A year to begin activation of my master back up plan.

However, things are going to be a little bit different for your favorite university lecturer.

I’m going to be teaching nursing students.

I was trained as a plant geneticist.

Dr. O’C’s Mum put it best when she asked me the question that has been ringing around my head since I heard I would be teaching nurses:

“Teaching them what?”

You’ve got to love mothers-in-law. Even when they aren’t legal.

Short answer, Anatomy and Physiology. I’ve never taken Anatomy & Physiology. I dissected a frog in high school biology. Or a fetal pig. I can’t remember. I did, however, take Plant Anatomy as an undergraduate.

If you end up in hospital in South Australia in a couple of years, it may be a good idea to ask your nurse who her Anatomy & Physiology professor was before you let them start poking around at what they think is your ‘kidney’.

My favorite part of this new position? The university runs a couple of small regional campuses out in country South Australia. Next semester, I’ll be sent out once a week to one of these campuses. By plane. When I heard that I had visions of flying out over the Outback in a single engine prop plane to bring the light of education to eager scantily clad natives. If not a Royal Flying Doctor at least the guy who trains the Royal Flying Nurses.

In reality, it’s probably more like a regional commuter flight to deliver a two hour lecture on the integumentary system to some bored miners’ kids in Whyalla.

Still and all, beats working for a living.

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Image credits:

University

Nurse

Royal Flying Doctors

This live version of The White Stripes’ “The Nurse” comes from the performance at Glastonbury 2005. The original is from the brilliant “Get Behind Me Satan”, available from .

But I’m also a teacher. And – without pretense or arrogance - I’m a pretty good one. With a text book, a laser pointer, Microsoft PowerPoint and a week or so to prepare, I can whip up a decent lecture on pretty much any topic. I can stand at the front of a lecture hall and drill the salient points home. I can amuse and inform. As a frequent public speaker, I know all the tricks to charm a crowd. In my experience, that’s the biggest hurdle to being an effective teacher at the university level. I’ve spent the last few years figuring out how to get to 18 – 21 year olds and what it means is that I do my job well.

And, in the last year and a bit, I’ve realized that I absolutely love it. I love the university environment. The independence that comes with my position, the manicured university campus, the constant interaction with keen and bright young adults. It is an invigorating work environment and one that I’m cherishing on a daily basis.

When I decided to do a Ph.D. it was because I wanted to be a university professor. I idolized some of the people who taught me in university. The political science professor that showed me the benefits of socialism and Left wing politics. The Southern Literature professor that taught the dark beauty of the Southern Gothic. A young physicist who nearly peeled me away from the life sciences. The University of Georgia geneticist who was able to express her passion for maize genetics in such a way that it became my ambition to study the same thing. And my Ph.D. supervisors – two of the smartest geneticists I’ve met to date - who enabled me to turn that ambition into a teaching position here in Australia.

The problem is that mine is a temporary position. The reality of the modern university is that the ‘teacher’ is a dying breed. Faculty members – lecturers – have to keep their feet planted firmly in two camps – research and teaching. Research brings the money in, research brings the news attention and thus more money, research keeps the government happy. And thus, more money. Teaching – at most major universities – is a necessary nuisance that  interferes with faculty research.

One of the many things I learned during my time at Oxford is that I’m not a very good researcher. I’m not driven by that aspect of science. I don’t enjoy doing it and I’m not good at it. When I started at my current university it was made clear – and fairly so – that unless I was willing to do the work to get a research program up and running that my appointment would be only temporary. The university was happy with my work, however, and they gave me another year. They are still happy with my work and I hope they’re going to give me one more.

That’s what this semester is all about – the voluntary extra work - convincing my employer that this is a fundamental truth and that they need to keep me around. My contract comes to an end at the end of the year. Again. And again I need an extension, another year.

Always in the back of my mind, I’ve had to deal with the axe that is waiting somewhere down the road. If it doesn’t come after this year, it will almost definitely come after next. There are a couple of other universities in town and some technical schools as well, but at some point the tertiary teaching well is going to run dry. I’ve spent the last year or so trying to come up with a long term plan. I flirted with industry – a relationship that didn’t go very well. I’m a born public servant, I’m afraid. I’ve toyed with going back and getting an M.B.A. – to maximize my potential for the biotech industry, but I just don’t have the cutthroat tempermant to excel in the business world. I’ve thought about trying to find a way to write for a living, but I’ve got a family to support these days and I’m not in a position to take a lot of risks.

So, ignoring advice from my attorney, I’ve decided to start working toward my certification as a secondary school teacher - yep, after two degrees down I get to go back to school again. I’m not sure how I feel about teaching high school. I’ve heard mixed reports. But if I’m going to be a teacher with a stable job, chances are it is going to have to be in a high school.

If nothing else, it will be an adventure.

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Image credits:

Socrates

Other images courtesy of BlogHer’s PicApp.

Leonard Cohen is just flat out the man. His ‘Songs of Leonard Cohen’ is available from .

Well, Jud, I’ve got a job that I hate but can’t quit. In my second job, I’m spending my weekends busting my ass to get lectures done that my undergraduates yawn through. I’ve got a sick kid and sick partner and have been cleaning up far too much effluvia this week. I’ve got an ache in my back and I’m starting to feel a bit under the weather myself. While working on my latest lecture about inherited diseases, I’ve discovered that I almost definitely have one or more of them.

And I got a rash so bad on my ass, I can’t even sit down.*

Maybe I’m just reaching that age at which the transition between virile young buck and grumpy old man begins. There have been a few incidents this week that lead me to believe that I may start yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off of my lawn any moment now. Actually, what’s that little brat doing out there in my garden…

As the radio at work burst forth with something that sounded more like a ring tone than what I would consider a song, I began bemoaning the lack of anything decent on the radio to my office mate. She immediately pounced, declaring this as evidence of my ‘grumpy old man”-hood. That I just didn’t ‘get’ modern pop. All my protestations that it had nothing to do with age, but with the quality of the music on the radio were met with derisive snorts and impressions of a hunched old man walking around with a cane. I explained that I’m quite ‘with-it’, that I’m down with cool music, but to every defense of my coolness she came up with another comment about my advancing years.

Did I mention that one of the only things I like about my writing job is my coworkers? Scratch that.

I do have some evidence, despite what my work colleagues may tell you, that I’m down with the kids. This weekend is the daughter of Arizaphale’s 14th birthday dinner. We’ve been invited because the BA, as she’s known, recognizes just how hip I am. She has remarkably good taste in music for one so young, so I thought I’d pick up a couple of CDs for her from my local independent record shop. (Two strikes against me, I know – CDs and record shops.) I chose a couple of older albums that I thought she might like – R.E.M.’s “New Adventures in Hi Fi”, which I think is that band’s best post-IRS offering, and Radiohead’s “OK Computer”. As I was checking out, I had a glance at the release dates of the albums – 1996 and ‘97 respectively. The BA would have been in nappies when I was discovering these albums. She would have been learning to toddle about as I singing along to ‘Karma Police’ and ‘The Wake-up Bomb’. In the BA’s eyes, this stuff is classic rock.

It’s not just music I’m struggling with, this new fangled technology is giving me trouble as well. Rassles’ tale of an  experience at the telephone store reminded me of a recent struggle I had with some fancy telephonic equipment.

I got a new mobile phone recently and, against my better judgment, went for the latest posh, whiz-bang model. Touch screen, doo dads galore, the kind of phone that will pretty much do everything for you short of cooking you dinner and tucking you into bed at night.

I don’t know how to use it. I’ve done everything, even resorting to that very un-manly activity of reading the instructions. But I still struggle to even answer the damn thing, nevermind sending a text message.

The scene: my lecture last Friday. Maybe it was some kind of karmic response to the speech I gave at the beginning of class berating my students for being too lazy to take notes. Maybe it’s because I actually used the words ‘back in my day…”

Whatever the reason, almost as soon as I started my lecture my pocket started tinkling and tittering with the most godawful digital ‘music’. I was astute enough to identify the phone as the source of the noise, but completely powerless to do anything about it.

There was a chorus of giggles as I haplessly tapped and poked at the damn thing.

Finally, one of my female students piped up:

“Chris, is that a Samsung XLHG-72293-Toucho-Mucho-Grasso?” (Yes, they call me Chris rather than Dr. – I get no respect.)

“Uh,” looking frantically for make and model of phone, “could be.”

“Do you want me to fix it for you?”

Gratefully, I passed it along to my student who restored blessed quiet with a couple of taps.

“Do you want me to turn it to silent?”

“Uh. Maybe not, I don’t know if I could, um, ‘unsilent’ it.”

To which my student rolled her eyes and handed my phone back.

These kids today have no respect for their lecturers. Back in my day we treated university lecturers with equal parts awe and fear. These days, a casual disdain.

Bastard kids.

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* Name that film.

Musical collective Kicksville have been releasing a series of digital-only singles available for purchase from Ropeadope Digital. The singles, compiled as “Season 1″ and “Season 2″ include Kicksville originals as well as covers of The Police, Willie Dixon, and Talking Heads. This track, appropriate to today’s post, features the voice of depression era poet John Beecher. Check out more from Kicksville at their website or .

Image credits:

Get off of my lawn

Senile dementia

Little professor

I actually really enjoy teaching. I’ve been teaching undergraduates intermittently for a decade now, and I always enjoy it. I am a bit odd in that I have no anxiety when it comes to public speaking. Before a lecture, which is more or less a performance, my heart races a bit, but this is a pleasant kind of agitation – similar to the effects of some of the controlled substances that I’ve indulged in at various times in my life. And that analogy carries over into the actual presentation. If it goes well, I get a buzz from it and feed off of the energy to keep going. Where I struggle is in one-on-one conversations or small group situations. These are where my social anxiety rears up and often strikes me dumb or renders my mouth capable of spewing only Lewis Carroll-esque jibberish.

At any rate, we were talking about teaching. This course was the first one that I have been solely in charge of from start to finish, which presented more challenges than what I’m used to in teaching. In the past I’ve just turned up, given a lecture and then passed any problems up the chain of command. Being at the top of the chain makes things a bit less enjoyable. Nonetheless, it’s all done but the counting. So, if you’ll allow me a little self-examination, I thought I would grade my own performance. Here is my report card for the term:

1. Contract extension – check. And a fat one. A+
2. Student success. Final marks are not in yet, so I can’t really evaluate how the kids have done. About 10% of them are at risk of failing which, to a certain extent, represents some degree of failure by me. But most of them have exceeded my expectations thus far. The exam is designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, so we’ll see. For now, an Incomplete.
3. Student evaluations of teaching. I think this is the best measure or my performance. Behind the veil of anonymity, my charges get to turn the table and grade me as a lecturer. Not all the responses are in, but so far they’ve given me a solid B. I score well on the boring things like making course objectives clear, helping them develop understanding of concepts and showing a genuine interest in their success. And, surprisingly, using up to date lecturing and teaching methods. Really? Standing up and talking at them for three hours a week while struggling to figure out how to work the projector is high tech? My worst score? “The staff member made the subject matter interesting.” Bastards. You try and make Genetics interesting.

So, overall I guess I would give myself a solid B (Distinction for Aussie readers and I never did figure out the byzantine British marking system). A job done.
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Speaking of jobs, I’ve got one for any Wordpress geeks out there. I’ve begun to feel that A Free Man needs a makeover. I’m a bit tired of using standard templates and would like to fanny the place up a bit. Now, thanks to BlogHer, that the site is self-supporting I’m hoping that someone out there might could give me a hand with this. If you’re a design person, or know a design person, shoot me an e-mail chris (at) afreeman (dot) org and maybe we can work something out. People who would be willing to be paid in kangaroo scrotum coin purses and clip on koala bears are particularly welcome.

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Finally, I’m sure you’re either going to vote or not and you’ve already decided for whom to vote. You’ll get no campaign spiel from me. But, Wilco and Fleet Foxes are giving away their live cover of Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Released in support of getting out the vote today. Download the cover here and don’t forget to vote. And vote for Obama. If you don’t like Obama, do me a favor and stay home. (OK, I lied about the spiel. I’m also violating my no advertising for the major labels rule as well. What are you gonna do about it?).

Today I had a meeting with my head of department to talk about future prospects at the university. With steam leaking out of my ears, the only future prospect that I had in mind was walking away from my office at the end of term and wishing a fond farewell to the university and my whinging, molly coddled students. I must have been some kind of a saint in a previous life, because what I came out of that office with is still unbelievable to me. It is so outside of what I had considered probable that I can only attribute it to some kind of accumulated karma.

It shook down like this: the boss man offered to extend my contract by 12 months, something I expected and wasn’t that thrilled about. In times like these, it’s nice to have a permanent position even if you don’t intend on staying on as a lifer. These short term contracts and the uncertainty that comes with them are reasons that I wanted out of academia. But then he added, “We won’t have much teaching for you in the first term, but would ask you to teach the same course in the second term.” I am employed as a lecturer so with nothing to lecture, was confused about what my job would be and asked for clarification, “What would you want me to do,then?” To which he replied, “What do you want to do?”

In essence, the university is willing to pay me a retainer – and a fairly hefty one – to teach one twelve week class next August. They’re willing to pay me a year’s salary for 12 weeks of work. During the other 40 weeks, I can do research, I can take some courses for career development, or I can do nothing at all.  For the glass half empty crowd, after the twelve months I may be out on the street. But I’ll have a bit more change in my pocket and, if I play my cards right, all the more employable.

Starting to think this move Down Under was a pretty good idea.

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Image credits:

Golden Buddha

Karma

Radiohead’s “OK Computer” is available from .

The two job situation in which I find myself has ramped up to the point that I actually have to do two proper jobs. Properly. I spent nearly eight hours teaching yesterday and while my acquantainances who are real teachers may snort derisively, that’s a lot of teaching for a slack university lecturer. Worse, it’s a lot of me for my unfortunate students. My lecturing style is a lot like my writing style – long winded, unnecessarily pedantic and filled with asides that only I find interesting. Imagine if you will, fifty sets of eyes rolling in unison when I pause mid-thought and say:

“Actually, the discovery of semi-conservative DNA replication is an interesting story…”

When did I become that teacher? The one that I used to laugh at from the back row of the lecture hall and make fun of  to the entertainment of my fellow students? Is this some sort of grand karmic scheme?

But being the doddering science lecturer isn’t my biggest problem. Now that the semester has started. I’m burning the candle at both ends. On any given weekday I’m in my office at the university, in my office at my writing job and if I could do so, it would be helpful to be both places at the same time. Instead, unable to circumvent the laws of physics, I wander back and forth along Adelaide’s North Terrace in a state of semi-consciousness. I make a lot of mistakes at both jobs, and my mood is detioriorating at a rate directly proportional to the number of hours that I’m working.

Grrrrr.

The good news is, with Dr. O’C gainfully employed, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If I can keep it together until Christmastime, I’ll hopefully be able to settle back into the mundanity of a single job. I can’t imagine what I’ll do with my time.

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Leonard Cohen’s “songs of Leonard Cohen” is available from .