I've found the perfect cutoff filter!!!

I had an epiphany the other day. I've realized that I have discovered one of the holy grails of engineering and it has been right under my nose for a while. I've found the perfect cutoff filter!!!  It turns out that cutoff filter is Nanogears! No matter how much energy I have going into her bedtime, I have no energy left when I walk downstairs after tucking her in. Lately, her bedtime also involves her getting up out of bed a few times for a drink, blowing her nose, her Teddy is missing, just because, or a myriad of other reasons that a 3 year old can conjure up. (I think my favorite is when she is yawning and rubbing her eyes while emphatically telling me she is not tired.)

Actually, that's kinda sad too. Even on the nights when DrWife and I go through the normal routine without a hiccup and she stays in bed, I still end up with no energy when I get downstairs. I'm not really sure if I know why. The only thing I want to do then is veg on the couch. (Somehow this relates to the tenure track. Don't worry, I'll get there shortly.) Below is a chart of my typical energy level throughout the day. Basically, if it is before 8 AM, I am ridiculously efficient and have a ton of energy. But after that, my energy level just plateaus until Nanogears' bedtime where it falls off a cliff. 

When you're on the tenure track, there's always something you should be doing. For instance, right now I should proofreading any of the 3 papers sitting on my desk, submitting invention disclosure forms, or working on at least one of the two NSF proposals due next week. But I don't have the energy to do any of that. I would rather get up at 4 AM and start working then than stay up late and get next to nothing done. I guess in that regard, I'm a morning person (obviously). 

I routinely get emails late into the night from my fellow faculty members. I'm pretty sure I've traded emails with another faculty member who was just finishing their night at around 4:30 AM while I was just getting started on the next day at that time. But at the same time, I know other faculty members that do the same thing that I do: get up early and get some work done before everyone else in the house is up. 

Is this the norm for other professions? I'm not too sure about that. Some of the industry folks I work with are night owls while others are morning folk.

The odd thing about this is I have no problem staying up late into the night. Most nights I don't end up doing that simply because I get up early in the morning. But there are times when I've woken up at 4 AM, did a whole day of work, and then had to take a long drive for a family trip where we drive well past midnight. And I end up fine the next day. Nanogears gets up at 6:30 or so, and I'm basically no worse off than normal. 

So what do you think is the norm for faculty? Stay up late or get an early start on the day? Which do you prefer?

Hi Internet! Long time... did you miss me?!!?!

No, seriously... Did you miss me? If you didn't, that would make me very sad. Ok, enough pitying (for now). Actually, I'm the one that feels kinda sad because it has been over a year since the last time I blogged and frankly, I miss it.

If my absence of blogging wasn't proof enough, the tenure track is hard, time consuming, and at times, very frustrating. I started this blog after I accepted the tenure track position at SnowU and then kept up with posting during my first year. Year Two, I basically fell off a cliff in terms of work load and I'm only now beginning to climb back on to level footing. I still have bitten off more than I can chew and still cannot say "no", but I do feel like blogging gives me a form of release that I missed during Year Two.

Year Three has started and it's been a hectic start to say the least. I've decided to teach my undergraduate lab class and my graduate class during same semester. This gives me an overload on teaching now but will hopefully give me more time during the spring semester to get more real research done. Also, last year at our Faculty Roast, GEARS was outed in a very public (albeit funny) forum. I didn't really expect that no one would be able to find out who I actually was, although apparently most of the students were twitter-stalking me without following me for at least a year so I wouldn't know that they knew. (Hi Students!) I'll have to be a little more cagey about what I say but that's not a big deal.

I'll share some more details and recap Year Two in the coming weeks.

New versus Junior

DrWife said something very interesting to me, which I thought warranted a blog post. First, some background. 

Yesterday, I was part of a large planning meeting involving multiple universities on a research consortium where I am the greenest person in the room. Unlike most junior (emphasis will make sense shortly), when I'm asked to be part of a meeting, I actively participate, give feedback, ask questions, etc. I really dislike just sitting in the corner, acting like another n00b prof, where its seems like I'm either too timid to join in or too worried about pissing people off while I'm untenured. I figure that if I'm asked to be a part of a meeting, then expect me to be participating in that meeting. Otherwise, it's a waste of everyone's time.

The problem with this philosophy is that I have a tendency to either 1) get dragged into tangential arguments, 2) end up putting my foot in my mouth, or 3) get "worked up" where I can't let things go. (Number 3 I know is going to be my downfall in the future unless I can get a handle on that.)

Well, in the course of the meeting, I did overstate a few things and realized that I was going down a path that was going to get me kicked out of the consortium, regardless of whether my point was correct or not. 

Later in the evening, I was filling in DrWife on the details and she said something that was pretty profound, at least to me. "Remember, you're the most junior person in the room by a long shot. It's not like me at my SuperAwesomeSauce Company. At SuperAwesomeSauce Company, I may be a new employee, but I'm not a junior employee. Academia is still a hierarchy. You may be part of the faculty, but you're junior faculty." (emphasis is mine)

Her statement really hit home, hence my post on it today. I'm not sure what do or say, if anything, about it. I feel like I am a contributing member on both of my faculties and I feel like I'm doing all of the things that a faculty member should do (research, teach, service). But I'm a junior faculty member as opposed to a new faculty member....

ZOMG! I CAN HAZ MONEY!

It seems like I've been waiting a billion years but I can finally say:

I CAN HAZ MONEY!

After sifting through double-digit numbers of rejections this year, one of my smaller grants has come through on a project that I think is really promising, both academically and commercially. I even have new shining account numbers to put people and supplies on which is even better. It's not a huge amount, but it is enough to help me get inertia on a project which can hopefully lead to future funding.

This makes me feel really good because I was down in the dumps, thinking that I wasn't going to get a grant this year. I know it sounds crazy because I've had good teaching and academic service reviews, and my research review said I was on the right track. But in my eyes, that would all be for naught if I didn't get a grant this year. 

Anywho, I'm off to the lab to see the sweet smell of progress!!!

Overtime in the Lab

I think my graduate students are finally starting to gather some momentum for doing work for themselves in the lab. I had an Engineer Blogs post some time ago on momentum and how I think my students transitioned from milling around and watching me to actually being able to do stuff for themselves. Well, this past weekend, they got a taste of what it's like to have deadlines approach and not have things go the way they want them (or I want them) to go. 

I thought I wrote a post a while back, either here or at Engineer Blogs, on using conference proceedings as a stepping stone to get results for a journal submission and to set a series of deadlines. I tried looking for it but I can't find it, so let me 'splain myself right now.

I use conference abstract submissions as a good way to set a short term goal (~4-6 months away) to get some results and give you something to work towards. In my field, conference abstracts tend to be a review of the abstract, which is 1-2 pages. The acceptance is based on that abstract and then a 4-6 page full conference proceedings is then submitted prior to the conference. This contrasts to some IEEE conference that I know where there is a full proceedings review process, etc. etc. 

Well, we submitted an abstract and were accepted for an oral talk for a conference at the end of June and the proceedings is due next week. Seems like no big deal. However, we've had to borrow some equipment from other labs which needed to be returned by yesterday at the latest. And everything was going smoothly until we saw, shockingly, unexpected results*. This was around Wednesday of last week. This proceeded to send of a panicked frenzy of activity with late nights in the lab, work over the weekend with me aligning components while wearing my professorial robes, and, most importantly, my graduate students thinking independently. 

I think they've crossed another threshold in research. They went from just watching me in the lab, to being able to perform prescribed actions in the lab, to thinking of solutions independent from me. That's really awesome. Also, I feel like I can discussions with them on a higher level because they understand a lot more about the field they're working in. The only sad part is that we still haven't figured out the source of our problem in our system and now we're down on equipment to test with it. 

* I actually was shocked by the results because the system was designed to alleviate this problem.... :-\