Summer in the life of an academic

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 11^th 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 21^st 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 1^st.  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.