Ready for Winter Term

Winter term starts tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. I think it will be a mostly manageable term. I'm just teaching one class, and it's one that I've taught eight times before. I'll have plenty to fill up my time, and no shortage of things to work on. But it should be less hectic than fall term, when I was teaching two classes, one of which was very large by COA standards. And, I wrote five grants between August and mid-December. (Technically I only wrote four, since one was a re-submission of the August grant. But the resubmission was a complete re-write, so I think it counts as a new grant. And neither grant came close to getting funded, which is incredibly annoying.) But the grant that I liked the most did get funded, which is quite exciting. It's for almost $50,000 a year for two years. My portion of the grant will be to help develop and teach a class on sustainable energy.

Winter break has been nice, although except for the last three days it hasn't really been that much of a break. In some ways I was working as hard during the break as during the term. But it was a good change of pace. But it will also be a nice change to be back in the rhythm of teaching.

I feel I should offer up some year-end pithiness, but I don't have much to say. The academic year is more meaningful to me than the calendar year. I don't really make new years resolutions. If I did it would be to be more productive, exercise more, do a better job of staying in touch with friends, and so on. But I basically resolve these things every day. Results are mixed. I also might resolve to start brewing beer and make my own kim chee.