Mama PhD

Last weekend, I traveled to Virginia to visit my first college roommate. As described here, I took an instant dislike to Peg based on such substantial attributes as her slender good looks and nice wardrobe, and the fact that my mother approved of her. Thanks to her decency and good sense, I was eventually able to see past my ridiculous prejudices, and we became good and lasting friends.

There is a function in math called the “Greatest Integer Function,” which assigns a value to every number that is the largest integer less than or equal to that number. For example, the numbers 1, 1.2 and 1.9 would all have a value of 1 for this function. As you can imagine, this leads to a graph that looks a lot like a set of stairs, and is the typical example used when describing what a “discontinuous” function looks like. I found myself thinking of this over the past week, as I watched my daughter move up a grade in school.

I guess the first thing I should do is disillusion any preconceptions that my Long Distance mom (Elizabeth Coffman) has built up in her probably much needed blog venting. Contrary to the popular belief of my parents, I actually ended up graduating with honors. Most people were surprised, in fact almost everyone except me.

About two years ago my then nine-year-old son discovered that the public radio station I regularly played in the car...

When I saw Scott Jaschik’s piece today about unhappy associate professors, my first thought was, haven’t we already discussed this? Well, yes, we have! Apparently associate professors have been “standing still” for quite some time—at least since the MLA released its report on the rank in 2009, and probably longer.

We've paid the deposit on Ben's cap and gown, so it looks like this is really going to happen. In just a few weeks he will have completed the journey he began on his first day of kindergarten. I cried then, and I'm sure there will be plenty of tears shed when he accepts his diploma, as well.

As I age, my eyes are staring to betray me. This is something that I particularly notice when I am reading things that involve superscripts or subscripts, which occurs often in math and economics.

I am writing this week from Faculty College – a week-long teaching retreat where faculty from each of the University of Wisconsin colleges and universities gather to discuss teaching challenges, innovative techniques, and the latest research on how students learn. It is hosted by a small college in the heart of central Wisconsin, a place of quiet beauty. I first attended as a brand-new assistant professor eleven years ago and found it an incredibly valuable, affirming, even transformative experience. However, I missed a few years after my daughter was born.