Special Presentation, Conferences, and Mentoring

I recently got to hear Martha Nussbaum speak. She is mentioned in the textbook for one of my classes, although she really didn't talk about that subject. Instead, she gave a "defense of liberal education." She argued that human development is giving way to get-rich-fields of applied science, technology, and engineering. She lamented the demise of humanities and the arts. It was pretty inspiring to hear her talk about the need for critical thinking and dissent as well as her description of the failures of democracy in countries where educational systems neglect the disciplines that can best teach critical thinking skills. She was sometimes hard to follow because she spoke in much the same style that she writes in--great for books, but sometimes to dense to follow easily. However, I am anything but sorry that I went. It was a very inspiring speech. There are times when I need that kind of recharge. I go to conferences and get fired up about teaching and research, but NCA and ICA are 6 months apart, so it's nice to have something in between.

Speaking of NCA, things are still going well although I'm starting to feel a little bit of the push. I'm proposing a panel, and I've got everyone on board. If I can get abstracts next week from people (including myself), that will be going very smoothly. As for the two papers I'm submitting, today is key. I need to get the analysis done for one of the papers, and I'm having trouble with some of the data. The reliabilities are not working out. I'm getting numbers that are not even mathmatically possible. Not sure what's going on, but that's a big deal today. I also need to work on adding quotes to the qualitative paper I'm submitting. The analysis is done, and I wrote a skeleton of the results section, but I need to have it mostly filled in with data today. If I can get those things done today, I'll be in pretty good shape with week and a half to go.

I had a paper rejected from ICA. Pretty disappointing. Now I will say that the paper is better now that it was in November when I submitted it. Still, I can count on one hand the number of papers that have been rejected by conferences, so it stings a little. I'm hoping to submit it to a journal in the not too distant future, so I'll be interested in seeing the reviews from ICA before I send it off.

Last semester, I feel like I did a pretty good job meeting with the new faculty member I'm mentoring, but my schedule has changed this semester. We were in the habit of getting together for lunch, but I teach during that time now. I've need to find a time that works for him. I really don't want to screw this up. When I moved here, that first year was tough, and I want to help him as much as I can.