This cartoon was posted this week on Twitter by PhD Comics
and it really hit home. Every May when classes and finals are over, people ask
me what I am doing this summer. While I
am on a 9-month contract, I pretty much work most of the summer. I don’t work every day or even necessarily
all day on days I work, but I do work nonetheless. And this cartoon explains it, but you
probably need more details.
My contract officially ended on May 11th and the
next week there were 3 deadlines: May 15 to submit a presentation to National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) annual conference next April, same
day to submit a presentation to the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators
(AMTE) annual conference next February, and May 17 at 3:30 pm CDT to submit a Supporting
Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant to the U.S. Dept of Education. With the help of some awesome colleagues, I
am a co-speaker (with Chris Larson) on an NCTM submission, a co-presenter
(Christopher Parrish) on an AMTE submission, and the PI on a SEED grant (with
Chris Larson).
Monday, May 21st brought another deadline to
submit a workshop proposal to the NSF Noyce Summit in July. We (Matt Miller, Amanda Jensen, and I) were
able to meet that deadline. Last week I also worked on a poster for the
Geometry for Teachers conference at the University of Michigan on June 13 - 15.
This week Amanda and I are going to work on a NSF Noyce Summit poster submission,
which is due on June 1st. In
the meantime we are preparing for the annual REMAST summer conference, which
will be held on June 19-20 in Brookings.
I will get a little break at the end of June before we head
to Washington, D.C. July 16 – 18 for the NSF Noyce Summit. In between all of these deadlines and events,
I need to complete a research paper on teacher resilience for our NSF Noyce
program and help Amanda get started on her Master’s research paper.
Also, this summer I should work on preparing for classes for
next year—my Geometry for Teachers course will have 18 students in the fall,
much more than usual, which means I may need to make some adjustments. I am excited to teach the History of
Mathematics course next spring. I have
taught it before at a different university, but this time I will use a different
book.
So, yes, I will be working this summer on things that didn’t
get done during the academic year. Most
9-month faculty have similar summers--it is what we need to do to be relevant
in our profession.
