{"id":2861,"date":"2010-10-19T09:54:01","date_gmt":"2010-10-19T09:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"\/blog\/?p=2861"},"modified":"2010-10-19T10:25:29","modified_gmt":"2010-10-19T10:25:29","slug":"the-past-few-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/the-past-few-weeks\/","title":{"rendered":"The past few weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So yes, for those that keep track, it&#8217;s been quiet here. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because ever since teaching began, there&#8217;s been one thing after another that&#8217;s been due outside of my regular teaching duties (which are making lectures (this involves actually reading the book!), homeworks, solutions and grading). \u00a0And I&#8217;ve found that as soon as there is just <em>one other thing<\/em>, I no longer have a life. What&#8217;s been mindboggling is that things have just kept piling up.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>August 31st<\/strong> I found out that the paper I submitted on June 28 (yes, less than a week after arriving in Iceland) was accepted as long as I made &#8216;minor&#8217; revisions within <strong>30 days<\/strong>. \u00a0It turns out trying to appease three reviewers is a non-trivial mental\u00a0exercise. This pretty much screwed up September.<\/li>\n<li><strong>September 2nd<\/strong>: \u00a0Sent in an abstract to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.agu.org\/meetings\/fm10\/\">2010 AGU Fall Meeting<\/a> in San Francisco this coming December (I&#8217;ll be there!). \u00a0A friend mentioned the deadline in an email less than a week before the abstract was due. \u00a0It prompted a minor crazy-fit and I decided I&#8217;d go, if for nothing else but to see old friends, visit the <a href=\"http:\/\/greatmallbayarea.com\/\">Great Outlet Mall<\/a> in Milpetas (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.carters.com\/\">Carter&#8217;s<\/a>! <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oshkoshbgosh.com\/\">Osh-Kosh<\/a>! <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gap.com\/browse\/division.do?cid=6170\">Gap<\/a>! <a href=\"http:\/\/bananarepublic.gap.com\/\">Banana Republic<\/a>!) on a\u00a0subsidized plane ticket &#8211; oh and score a &#8216;research point&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li><strong>September 16th<\/strong>: Gave a shortened and simplified version of my thesis defense talk at the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ieee.is\/?p=60\"> IEEE-Iceland annual meeting<\/a>. \u00a0The lead time for this was two weeks (yes, when the paper, and the abstract hit). \u00a0Initially I was going to translate it all, but 1-2 days into the translation process I threw in the translation-towel and gave the talk in English.<\/li>\n<li><strong>October 4th<\/strong>: Actually sent in the revised paper, after getting an extension. \u00a0Mind freed up somewhat.<\/li>\n<li><strong>October 9th<\/strong>: Presented a poster at the <a href=\"http:\/\/vefir.hi.is\/rannsoknarthing_von_2010\/\">R-VoN 2010 Symposium<\/a> here at the <a href=\"http:\/\/hi.is\/\">University of Iceland<\/a>. \u00a0(Also served as a session chair, but that didn&#8217;t drain any mental capacity, just time.)<\/li>\n<li><strong>October 14th<\/strong>: Held my first ever midterm exam. \u00a0I finished making the exam copies at 11pm the night before. \u00a0Ironically, that meant I was in bed about two hours earlier than usual on a Wednesday night because I teach my class at 8:20am on Thursdays &#8211; and I&#8217;m never done with my lecture by the end of Wednesday&#8217;s workday (most often I haven&#8217;t even started it).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Oh, and all the &#8216;research-related&#8217; items are basically re-hashes of my Ph.D. Thesis Project That Just Won&#8217;t<em> Die<\/em>!! \u00a0(To paraphrase <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vrTGyGSdrtI\">The Simpsons<\/a>: Die Project, Die!)<\/p>\n<p>Making things just slightly more tricky is that I signed up for an <a href=\"https:\/\/ugla.hi.is\/kennsluskra\/index.php?tab=nam&amp;chapter=namskeid&amp;id=70199120106\">&#8216;Introductory Course on Teaching at a University<\/a>&#8216; which has been a form of soul-food (sanity-saver even?) but also taken up a bit of time. \u00a0It&#8217;s been very valuable to be able to meet up with other teachers every two weeks and just converse about teaching. \u00a0I guess one could even call it a small &#8216;support group&#8217; for teachers. \ud83d\ude42 \u00a0The &#8216;tricky&#8217; part is that this is actually a course, so there is some <a href=\"http:\/\/hrefna.com\/kennslufr\/\">required reading<\/a>, which is often in a language I barely understand (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phenomenography\">Phenomenography<\/a> anyone?). \u00a0But it&#8217;s given me ideas to try in my own teaching, which I&#8217;ve enjoyed.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully though, I think there is nothing solidly pending in particular until the end of <em>November<\/em> (there await a Research Group talk, making of final exams, making of AGU poster, actually traveling to California). \u00a0In the meantime my goal is to be done with Thursday&#8217;s lecture before the end of work on Wednesday, and Monday&#8217;s lecture by end of work on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and then there&#8217;s the small matter of me agreeing to teach &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/ugla.hi.is\/kennsluskra\/index.php?tab=nam&amp;chapter=namskeid&amp;id=08312120110\">Antennas and Wave Propagation<\/a>&#8221; this next semester, where there is no master book to lean on, because it&#8217;s been taught by a radio amateur guy for decades. \u00a0Essentially, I&#8217;ll have to actually pull this course together somehow. \u00a0Thankfully the old (now retired) teacher is still around, so I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll get lots of pointers, but still. \u00a0Eeek! \u00a0Oh, and I&#8217;m also contractually obligated to contemplate future comm-courses for when the economy turns around and the University gets a bit of funding again&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>So, that&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve been quiet. \u00a0Not a lot of mind space. \u00a0But it&#8217;s clearing up, at least momentarily now. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So yes, for those that keep track, it&#8217;s been quiet here. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because ever since teaching began, there&#8217;s been one thing after another that&#8217;s been due outside of my regular teaching duties (which are making lectures (this involves actually reading the book!), homeworks, solutions and grading). \u00a0And I&#8217;ve found that as soon as there is<a class=\"button\" href=\"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/the-past-few-weeks\/\" title=\"Read More\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-container col-md-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2861"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2872,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions\/2872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}