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kaleidescopeeyes88
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Name: kaleidescopeeyes88
Location:
Gender: Female
Interests: Being snarky, more than anything else.
Expertise: ACK! WHY ARE YOU PRESSURING ME???
Message: message me
Member Since:
9/13/2005
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| I've been blogging on Xanga for almost five years. I had started this blog as a means to update my friends about my life, but I soon discovered that most of my readers weren't my friends at all, but were other Xangans also writing for their own reasons. So this blog went through various phases. I sometimes did pop culture and political commentary. I often wrote anecdotal stories about my family. I went through a phase of writing limericks about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. (That was weird.) I ranted about my heartbreaks and misadventures with boys. And I often talked about my struggles making it through my PhD program, which I am now finishing.
I have felt for quite some time that I was running out of things to contribute to this blog. My readership, which once hit an average of 200 views for each post, has dwindled. Amidst the Christian teenagers that seem to make up a good deal of the Xanga community, I've often felt that I don't quite belong in this network. But Xanga also got me in touch with several really awesome folks, some of whom I've met in person and feel lucky to be able to call friends. Maintaining a blog without any clear sense of what I wanted to do with it was also a refreshing a cathartic way to practice my writing without the pressure of having to get all academicky.
I may still come back to this page time and again, but I'm currently trying to transition into my NEW BLOG. I invite you all to visit me there!
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| It's official: I've accepted tenure-track, assistant professor position!
So here's how it all went down...
On Tuesday morning, I got a call from the dean at the first school I interviewed with, the public university near Philadelphia. I could tell it was an aggressive offer on their part, because the salary was higher than I had expected, and higher than they had even said was their starting salary for an assistant professor. I was thrilled. Not knowing the first thing about negotiating a faculty position, I emailed my advisors who had been helping me through this whole job application process. Upon their suggestion, I contacted the second school, the private university near Boston, and let them know that I got a job offer and that I had until the end of the week to accept or decline it. On Wednesday, the chair of the English department at this second school called me to say that they wanted to also make me an offer. Their offer, however, was for a lower salary. So again, I consulted my team of advisors. I let the first school know that I got another offer. I went back to my second offer and told them that my competing offer was for a higher salary at a place with lower living costs. The chair wrote me back right away and told me she would talk to the dean and get back to me. On Thursday morning, I got a call from the chair saying that the dean wanted to match my competing offer's salary and give me guaranteed summer funding, worth 1/9 of my base salary, for my first two years. Had I been more aggressive, I could have gone back to the first school and asked if they could match that. But given that the university in Boston was my first choice anyway, and given that it has more resources in general and a lighter teaching load (2 classes per semester vs. 3 in the other school), I didn't want to play this game of chess anymore. It didn't feel right to be playing with my second choice school, when they should be moving onto extending the offer to their next candidate. So, I accepted right away.
I'll be moving to Boston this summer! New job, new home, and, I expect, a new blog. =)
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| My brother and I have gotten iPhones. One of the first features that caught our attention was the Voice Memo tool, which allows you to record little voice messages to yourself. You can also email these messages to someone.
The first thing my brother does is send me a voice memo that says, "My sister is a penis. My sister is a penis."
The next day, I send him one in return: "My brother eats his boogers. My brother eats his boogers."
We are very mature.
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| My mom has been exceedingly slow at entering the digital world. She's generally averse to anything she deems too complicated or unnecessary. And not knowing English has also kept her from getting an email account or using the internet. Gradually, though, she's been taking baby steps in getting connected. When my brother got a new Macbook, he left her his old one so that she can go onto Chinese websites to read the news and watch videos. Now that my brother and I have each gotten iPhones, we've left our old iTouches to our parents. The touchscreen allows my mom to write in Chinese script, so I showed her how she can write emails in Chinese. This means, of course, that I also had to set up an email account for her. Her first ever!
Tonight, I showed mom how to use Gmail. I changed the interface to Chinese so that it would be easier for her to read all the buttons. Her first email she wrote was to my brother, in English:
"what you doing? are you drinking? call me!"
I asked her if she wanted to sign off with something like, "Love, Mom," to which she replied, "No need. He knows it's from me."
My mom is so cute.
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| Yikes, it's been a long time since I've updated this thing! I'm still not going to divulge the details of my campus interviews, because I'm still waiting to hear back from both schools. I need to be careful about saying anything that may get around to folks who may have some hand in my job prospects. Paranoid, perhaps, but it's better to be safe. So I'll just say that they both went really well. I can confidently say that I came into both well prepared, and that there isn't anything more I could have asked of myself. I do want one job more than the other, but I would be exceedingly grateful for either. So now it's just a matter of waiting and trying to get back into the swing of my work routine. I should know by the end of the month if I get one of these jobs or not.
The busy never stops, though. Aside from scrambling to get my dissertation finished and filed, I'm teaching two very different classes in two very different schools. One is a large intro to Asian American history class with 200 students who are generally science majors taking the class for GE credit. The other is a literature seminar with ten English majors in attendance-- One of them is a graduate student, and one is a returning student, and all are women. (It's a women's liberal arts college.) My large class is going fine-- I had taught it before and it's going smoothly. The small class is really a dream. The students are crazy smart and super invested. I can bring in the densest of theoretical texts and they're still game to discuss it and break it down. They voluntarily take on difficult assignments for the sake of the challenge. I fear that I'm not going to have as great of a teaching experience again in my life. I love teaching my intro students, too, of course. But there is something to be said about being able to teach students who want to be there, and who are slightly older and more mature. And it is true, also, that the class dynamic is very different when there are no men in attendance. Case in point: In my co-ed classes, even if there are only 2 men in a class of 25, the men tend to dominate the conversation. And in my current class of 200, the only students who talk at all are men. Internalized passivity among the women, I guess.
So now it's time to get back into my usual routine. Kinda tough, because I'm also scrambling to catch up with my friends, who have been so amazingly supportive and encouraging during this crazy time. Plus, there's a triple-whammy weekend to look forward to: President's Day, Valentine's Day, and the Lunar New Year all wrapped in one. I'll be spending time with the family, of course. As for Valentine's Day, I may or may not have more to divulge about that later. ;)
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