Mode of transport

I’m one of nature’s bike commuters. Of course growing up in the Netherlands this is a lot easier. There is infrastructure for that. You can pedal and think and honestly not pay that much attention to your surroundings. You know. Commute. 

I commuted by bike in Baltimore, South Africa, and to ESA and Leiden observatory. 

I haven’t commuted to work on a bike even once here in Louisville. 

I mapped it out before moving here, the university has a bike encouragement program, the bus has bike racks up front. Why not?

And that’s what I’m wondering about. First off is much less infrastructure for biking here but that did not stop me before in the US. I suspect it’s also the pressure from work as a professor. And there was a lot of that. A LOT of the work is instantly forgettable admin churn. And there is so much of it. 

I can do email triage etc on the bus so I did that a lot. And twitter of course. Gotta twitter. Otherwise I’d have a moment of mindfulness. 

But then the pandemic hit and I just took a car to work because who else was going anywhere? And the habit stuck. And then kid 2 had to be collected from school 1 while kid 1 had to be collected from school 2. And so on and so forth. But do I really need to do this? Kids can take busses to school again. And I can move back to the bus or possibly…maybe…bike there?  A colleague biked in the other day. I should try. And another colleague has started researching e-bikes. 

The second car is now old enough to qualify as a “historical vehicle”. Maybe it’s time to reconsider the bicycle for the commute. Just wish my class didn't end at 7pm. 

UPDATE: I did bike in! This was the proof-of-concept. Didn't die. Of traffic or heatstroke. But it does feel like a thing an e-bike would be very nice for. 

Visit to STSCI

This week I got to visit STSCI, one of the most formative places for my scientific career. The idea that science is for everyone, data should be available and easily accessible, my philosophy on working with students etc etc all can be traced for a large part to my 6 years (2000-2003 and 2005-2008) I spent there.

It was a very warm welcome. It was ridiculously good to see so many science collaborators and friends. All of whom have of course not aged a bit and are still very much amazing.

I had to endure some genteel ribbing about not taking the job there 5 years ago. Fair enough. And I had to remind me that the giddy atmosphere has a lot to do with the ridiculous good performance of JWST after a flawless launch and that I was the second in-person speaker. People were happy to see me and just happy to see each other and science together. 

So I am planning a second visit where I can calibrate the emotional vibe of this one. 

I tallied up all the stuff kicked around. A dozen paper ideas (not all are going to make it because there is only so much time in the day) and half a dozen telescope proposal ideas for the coming year. Oh yes, sciencing in person is frikkin awesome!

The Deadline Game

Deadlines are a thing in astronomy. There is always one on the horizon. Telescope time, grants, more of those. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. 

A big part of becoming an effective professor is to deal with them. And I do not deal well with last minute frantic editing. The kind that much of academia seems to thrive on. I cannot proofread or edit effectively that way. And stress messes me up (small infections, poor sleep, mental health effects etc). 

So start on time. The favorite thing professors tell their students. And I did. I wrote a first draft of several Hubble proposals months ahead.  When I had the first idea. AND I decided against several. So start early and NOT do some. Only way to scope out a reasonable week before the deadline. Trick is often for me it’s not just time but also energy. I had a spring break and I got a bunch of stuff done in it and rested up. But it’s a fine line. And I was still pretty stressed. There are little tells (see above). 

But once again it’s done. Managed not to think how much is riding on successful proposals (me getting paid over the summer, students actually doing Stuff) and just gushed about how fun the science will be. 

Tenure File Mental Notes

 Ok so I am procrastinating on working on my tenure file. A little.

Here are some of the thoughts I had while I was putting this together. There is little to no clear guidance and a lot tends to change when the next Dean in charge of the process rotates in or another “system” is adopted. This is to be expected. Nothing is set in stone and if, for example, not having all your publications loaded is fine, it could be dropped. 

1. Have a google drive or dropbox or something that is on the cloud and on your computer and organize EVERYTHING in there.
2. It’s ok to rename things. I am liberally renaming files to more legible titles that are descriptive. Why? Because no one is reading this whole thing.

No one. Make it easy to skim.

3. Make a little note explaining what this giant list of files is. Explain acronyms etc. I keep adding more. And this is what MNRAS stands for. 
4. Everything goes into the cv. I did not fully appreciate that. Send it to your HoD. There is a thing that all the different levels expect. Check with those experienced with the process. 
5. Hey do you have a summary sheet or something that HR made? Check if it has your birthday and/or social security information on there. No need for ID theft...
6. There is going to be a time-wasting thing. Possibly linked to point 4 or 2 or 7. There is some task that feels insulting and grinds in that last exposed nerve you have left at the end of the process. There it is. Expect it. It may well be yourself who is making you do it. 
7. Completeness is great but it’s more about box checking. You should have something in every category. It’s nice if you have everything but it’s ok if you miss that committee you were on for a week four years ago. 
8. Use the official PDFs of your publications. I had quite a number of preprints initially because working from home but I took the effort of downloading the full in-print versions and replaced them. Looks much better but also has the DOI numbers on them. 
9. Summarizing plots. I made a plot with h-index, number of citations, number of papers etc etc. All lines racing higher.  It’s meaningless of course but looks impressive. Pre/post improvement of undergraduate in my astro class. Pretty picture of Hubble release and one of my book. 

Doesn’t that tell you I’m solid researcher and teacher? Sure it does. 

ESA Hubble Image of the Week

 https://esahubble.org/images/potw2209a/

One of the overlapping galaxies in my STARSMOG program was selected by ESA for an "Image of the Week". Nice pick me up after last week and let's just say the *waves hand at everything*.

Minor guilt trip to follow to the missing scientific analysis that I am sure I'll be able to get out any day now. It does help that I have a graduate student working on this now. 

NGC 4496A, an old friend from thesis days when I counted the background galaxies (n>1, the obvious one you see here) in WFCP2 data. 

Online doesn't work (for us) ... or does it?

I’ve seen a bunch of people whine about how online classes and workshops etc doesn't wooooork. And inevitably they are thinking of the classes we threw online in a few days in March 2020 or now because you have <5yo kids (hey remember kids? Under 5? Not vaccinated yet?) and of butt-numbing zoom marathons of online talks that were “conferences”. 

Yes *those* didn’t work. 

The online format. Some observations.

Synchronous sucks. Different time zones, connectivity, the “you’re muted” conversation. In class, trying to keep an eye on those student on the laptop, and those in class and oh god why is it resetting? This hyflex option can go take a hike. Instructor overload and poor results for students/participants. 

Asynchronous with dedicated synchronous is awesomeballs. Record your talk. Make a second take, check the captions, make the slides available. People can watch it when it fits their schedule. The synchronous part happens for an hour or two with discussion, active participation. The interactive parts. This works pretty smoothly for classes and workshops etc. The rest of your life happens around it (since it is still sharing a space with you) but you can do it. You don't feel terrible about missing some. You didn't when it was a conference in person did you?

I feel this is the future for a lot of events. I hope it is. Even though I love going to conferences and hanging out with friends old and new. 

Kleinscheiss Tag

Of course the Germans have a term for it. 

I was reading this medium article. https://link.medium.com/x4NljxKmkib

There is term for that in German — ‘Kleinscheiss Tag!’ — it means ‘little shit day.’”

Or I call it a “crud/cruft burn day. It’s when I discard or deal with all the little requests that have piled up in the email and todo lists. 

From unrelated comic here: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/self_love

This week has been all Kleinscheiss days. Yeah I like the term. Not the activity. All of it is small administrivia or short emails.

And it’s “just this one little thing”. I let all my email etc pile up for a week just to see how much of it there was during a summer week.

Not too bad, 200 new emails to deal with. Unsubscribe a bunch, answer, and of course start dealing with the 100+ items that were sitting in the Today/This Week/This Month folders already. 

It’s happening. Doing some of the more substantial (medium Scheiss?) like replying to referee reports and what have you. But designating a day for Kleinscheiss is for the stuff that has taken on emotional baggage. You know the memes. The stuff you’d keep putting off even though it really only takes 15min. 

Blarg. Burn them with fire. Or you know. Cross out that item on the list. 

Productivity methods and why they failed (for me)

Trello. - someone made me use it. Confusing and visually noisy. Abandoned almost immediately. And it cost money to expand to enough board for me to use. 

Why it failed: overload from large team. 

Kanban board - found a lovely app that allowed me to color code my tasks and neatly see my progress. 

Why it failed: only worked on my iPad. So only available on one point. So abandoned because I’m cheap and won’t shell out for cross-platform. 

Bullet Journal - hasn’t failed per se. Adopted this after reading a lot about it and listening to productivity podcast. 

Why it would fail: tricky to track progress. Feels like treading water on small tasks. Also: only works where my journal is. 

Why it hasn’t yet: analog. Something pleasant about that. Satisfaction in physically crossing off tasks. Allows me to acknowledge tasks that I do but are not associated with an email. 

Inbox 0 - sorta working. Adopted 5 years ago so should be considered a success. Big thanks to Matt Kenworthy for getting me starting. 

Why it’s failing: does not differentiate between a 2-day task (rewrite this article) and a 30min one. So weight is given to shallow, short-duration tasks. Overwhelm from spam(ish) accounts as well. And I’ve abandoned checking the “waiting” and “someday” folders because...well overwhelm. But the biggest reason: it’s now (forcibly) split between two accounts. 

Time blocking - like the idea. Block time to deal with This Thing. Be realistic about what you really can do each day. 

Why it would fail? Because 2020/2021 that’s why. Labore interruptus. 

To-do list on a pad - literally the worst of all worlds. I would lose the pad and walk around feeling I missed something. I keep finding old ones from years ago. 

Suggestions? Other than Hermione's time turner?

2021 Wins

One of the healthier things to do at the end of the year is to tally the wins. 2021 wasn’t exactly the easiest year with the pandemic raging on and my tenure file due. 

Win #1 the tenure file

This was months long process and it is in. Talkmabout a win list. 5 years of grants, papers and more. I won’t lie. This is an anxiety machine. What needs to go in, what is considered sufficient, what actually gets read etc. is vague enough to add to a general background of anxiety for most of the year. It was a relief/anticlimactic event to have it in. I’m sure there is some more to do. I haven’t heard a peep for months. 

Win #2 the book

I finished my book. The key thing here is finished. I didn’t aim for amazing, brilliant, complete, comprehensive or even fully spelled right. I aimed for complete. If that sounds like I don’t like the end result it’s not that. I can’t really judge. But I did what I set out to do: write a 200+ page book on a topic I like. 

Win #3. Bike to school most days

Ms C has a bike and she and I have been biking to her school most days. We are the only ones. Sometimes scary but it’s been lovely. And doubling down on our Dutch-ness. 

Win #4 m plays football (soccer for US audience) 

This took some doing. Mr M got into a soccer team and we managed to stick with it. And he likes it! Both of these are “trying to be involved parent” goals. Weirdly harder and easier with the pandemic. No travel so I can be there consistently but part of a churn of weeks that seem to grind relentlessly. 

Win #5 classes did ok

I mean not amazing but “pandemic good”. I still got everyone, well most everyone, there and over the finish line. Calling that a solid win in pandemic semesters 3 and 4. Students liked the classes too. 

Win #6. Students did ok

I’m working with students on research. Which is going fine amazingly. They are writing their papers and applying for grad schools. I’m in awe they are functioning at all, even thriving as a group. 

Win #7 kids in the swim team

With the pool opening back up, R got them swimming lessons and they got into the (not hypercompetitive) swim team. Get them to move again. Yay. 

Win #8 40th first author paper 

I resubmitted my 40th first author paper days before my 45th birthday. These numbers are converging. That’s a good thing right? I’m happy I got some of my ideas on paper and into journals. 

Win #9 school clicked for Ms C

Transition to middle school amidst a pandemic was weird and stressful but we all stayed with it and c is now enjoying classes and clubs. 

Win #10. The house got better 

New windows installed, kids got their own bedrooms, redid the columns on the front porch, restored the octagonal window out front, basement fully waterproof and outfitted with small gym. Yeah not bad. 

Win #11. The garden grew some food

This is 99% Robin but our chaos gardening approach did seem to yield a lot of tomatoes. More gardening to come. Death to lawns.