Saturday, April 21, 2007

And again, I'm humming

"Dunt, dunt, dunt...another one bites the dust!"

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

posted by Michelle @ 3:05 PM, 2 comments

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The problem with having 4 papers under review?

Some are bound to come back as R&Rs before you have the time or are ready to do the revisions.

I must remember not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

posted by Michelle @ 5:25 PM, 3 comments

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Apparently, I hum a little tune...

...when I hit the "send" or "ok" key to email or upload a paper submission to a journal. It's involuntary, I think. I just realized I was (unconsciouly, and all alone in my office) humming this tune as I sent an email submission to the Journal of Latin American Studies.

Do you have a funny thing you do when you submit a paper?

posted by Michelle @ 5:24 PM, 3 comments

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Real life Scrubs

I'm sitting in Caribou, with two young female doctors at the next table. Picture two of these (though less made up). They have talked about:

whether its worth buying new jeans since they will only get to wear them 4 days a month, whether they should wear their white coats ("They weigh, like, 20 pounds. How do you wear your stethoscope?"), and different attending Docs ("He was really good. He asked me lots of questions, and I was, like, always wrong, but that's ok.").

One has a copy of pocket medicine. And she admits she can't follow a recipe to bake oatmeal raisin cookies and left her keys at the counter (someone found them).

I'm afraid they don't instill much confidence, but perhaps it's different when they're dressed up in their nice white coats.

posted by Michelle @ 5:25 PM, 0 comments

Monday, April 02, 2007

More fodder from today's reading

From an article related to the status of women in political science, a reference to this cartoon:


Link to original.

posted by Michelle @ 12:14 PM, 0 comments

Lame professor sentiment of the day

Today, I'm reading about trends in teaching and the pedagogy of political science faculty. [And, not just for fun. It's related to my presentation on a roundtable on teaching strategies for women at next week's Midwest Political Science Association meeting in Chicago.]

I came across this lame and somewhat rude statement in an article in the January 2003 issue of PS:

...don't be obscure, in either your speech or your assignments. Your students are attending the school where you are working because they couldn't get into the school from where you graduated.

I'm not sure that always assuming your students aren't as smart or prepared as you is a useful mindset. I prefer to think that if we challenge our students, most of them will step up to the challenge. Of course, it may require more effort or support from the prof if students aren't very well prepared for our courses. There's a difference between being smart and being academically prepared. Most students are smart, but not all have sufficient preparation for success in college. And then, there are those that are both smart and well prepared but not well motivated.

But then again, I do have the privilege of teaching undergrads with average SAT scores exceeding 1200, most of whom are smart, well-prepared and highly motivated.

posted by Michelle @ 11:17 AM, 4 comments