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I submitted my last marks for the term this morning. This was a long slog but it’s done, hooray!

Now I can get back on track with the encyclopedia duties and work on my paper for the conference next month.

I also hope to make a few more interesting and substantive posts but, for now, I’m content to celebrate the fact that I’m done, done, done with the term work!

EUROPEAN HISTORY - The Department of History invites applications for a one-year limited-term appointment in European History at the Assistant Professor level, beginning August 1, 2009, to teach in the Laurentian at Georgian program in Barrie. The successful candidate must have a completed Ph.D., demonstrated research productivity, and teaching experience. Interested individuals should submit a curriculum vitae, a teaching dossier, and three letters of reference to Dr. Patrice Sawyer, Acting Vice-President, Academic, Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, Ontario, P3E 2C6. Applications will be reviewed beginning 1 June, 2009 but will be accepted until the position is filled.

Department of History — Laurentian University

Today I received a professional disappointment. It was politely worded and all that, but, still, a disappointment that affects not only me but others — colleagues and students — who put in effort on my behalf.

Now, I’m not going to wail or wax sullen. I honestly feel worse for those who expended effort on my part. I thanked the colleague who spearheaded the effort, two years running because that’s a lot of work! I’ll thank the students who spoke on my behalf and my department that thinks so highly of me. Then I’ll move on because life’s too short to get hung up on externalities when I have so many good things going for me.

I have a grad student whose research essay is in for final revisions (one chapter still awaits my edits). I have two classes that went very well this term but for which I still have to finish marking. There are plans awaiting for the fall: book orders for two more classes to sort out and course plans to tackle. I have a conference paper to complete, a roundtable for which I need confer with my peers and the encyclopedia still hanging over my head. I have a daughter who I need to take to the park, another who needs me to help her shop for grad shoes and two dogs who always enjoy an excuse for a walk. There’s a lot to do and most of it is pretty fun (well, the marking is a bit of a slog, but the rest is all pretty good).

I figure the best way to handle a disappointment, professionally or personally, is to keep on trucking. See you once the marks are in!

• Two of the crocuses that I planted last fall beside our front door are threatening to bloom.
• The advertising flyers are full of spring styles and outdoor furniture.
• The neighbourhood is alive with busy householders sweeping up huge swathes of sand off of the lawn, roadway and sidewalks in front of their houses.
• I’ve taken youngest to the lakeside park every day this Easter break for vigorous exercise on the swing set. She’s over the moon and almost over the bars!

Today’s New York Times notes that three states — Indiana, Minnesota and Utah — are running pilot projects to articulate standards for academic degree programs. In two of the states, Indiana and Utah, history is on the short list of disciplines for the attempt at an American version of the Bologna Process. (The implications of the Bologna Process only belatedly appeared on my personal radar after reading in the CAUT Bulletin about the Dangers and Opportunities of the movement.) Read more »

I’m laughing as I watch the nearby university to the east loudly promote their new OUA hockey team.

It’s good to see that other universities can get into even more stupidly expensive boondoggles than ours has recently managed! I’m only sorry for my dear friends teaching there who’re going to live with the results of this type of academic management decision-making.

On Friday, I attended a research project defense for one of our fourth-year students as one of his committee members.

This weekend, I was reading the draft of an M.A. thesis for a graduate student on whose committee I sit and whose defense we’ll hope to have underway late this spring.

Today, I got word that a former student has successfully defended his dissertation at the University of Calgary.

Isn’t it uplifting when students do great things?

1. I finished up teaching for the term yesterday. (Marking’s a whole other story as is my rapidly accelerated graduate supervision.)
2. My new laptop arrived yesterday and it is so shiny!