Happy New Year (if you're in academia)

Monday begins a new school year. For those of us in academia, our calendars run September to May rather than January through December. June and July don't really exist, and August is a blur because we are so busy preparing for the new term. I love the first day of school. The weather is starting to turn, I get to meet a bunch of new students who are ready to begin their 4-year journey through college, and I get to try out a few of the hairbrain ideas I've come up with during the summer. My goal for this year is to really, honestly, try to enjoy my job as much as I can. Not that I haven't in years past, but this year I don't have the spectre of Tenure hanging over me. My tenure application is done and is starting to work its way through the official channels. There is nothing more to add. I've made my case and I'm at total peace with it. Not to sound too cocky, but I don't really expect anything except a positive outcome. Now receving tenure doesn't mean that I stop trying to do better. Quite the contrary. It just means that I can do my job without having to justify what I'm doing. I don't need to keep track of everything that I do, and I don't need to do more stuff just to make my tenure binder thicker. This year I'm just going to focus on my students. I'm going to put every ounce of effort into reaching as many as I can. I want my senior research students to have a great experience. I want my freshmen to see how exciting (yes exciting) chemistry is. I want my organic lab students to really do well and not think organic chemistry is a miserable experience like I did. Yes, this is going to be a great year. I am still praying that "Joe" can graduate this year too. So put on your party hat, grab some noisemakers, get the confetti ready, and be ready to kiss the one you love come midnight. Happy New Year!!!

Malcolm Gladwell is a great author

Just finished "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. It's the third book I've read by him and I'm adding his newest book "What the Dog Saw" to my to-read list. In fact, Malcolm Gladwell is now in that category of authors where it doesn't matter what the book is about, what the reviews are, I don't need to browse a few pages, I just add any new book he writes to the to-read list. Period. I don't care if it's a yiddish cookbook; if Malcolm writes it, I will read it.

Reading list update

Wow, two posts in the span of 10 minutes! While I'm thinking about it, I just wanted to give an update on the "YEAR OF THE READING LIST" project I've been doing. Yes, it is still going on. I had to take a little break and read a bit of nonfiction. My list of books I wanted to read was getting out of control so I wanted to knock a few off. Before any of you judge me or call me a quitter, just keep in mind that I got pretty far into "Anna Karenina" before I couldn't take it anymore; that book would cause most people to swear off reading for a bit. I will tackle a few of the shorter, less-Russian volumes next. I'm thinking about some Hemmingway.

Really? Only one week until school starts?

OK, here it is. My long awaited return to the blog.I've finished my tenure and promotion binder, migrated from my old work PC to the new Mac, and got chemicals ordered for student research projects. Next week we will hopefully be able to move some stuff into the new science building. All that is left is to get things ready for classes. I say that like it's just a couple of things. In essence, it really is. I'm not making any wholesale changes to the courses I'm teaching, but I always have grand ideas bouncing around in my head. I'll see about getting to those as the semester goes on. That's enough of a post for now. Back to work. Thanks for reading. Hopefully the next post won't be months away.