That plus a buck-fifty will get you coffee at Starbuck’s

Both the Real Doctor and I will be leaving our current employment in June. I leave from an employment situation that other lecturers have described as akin to an abusive relationship. I have the anxiety and uncertainty of whether I’ll be employed every three months, the financial compensation that would be humorous were it not real, the lack of collegiality, and the outright hostility of the university administration. I don’t know yet what I am moving into, but I can say with certainty that it won’t be much worse. The Real Doctor, on the other hand, has a different departure. There was some testiness between her and her supervisor. This irritation--the sort of thing that leads to a movie’s producer and director citing “differences in artistic vision,” but actually meaning something far less appealing—has been sort of resolved, and sort of buried, so she is leaving on better terms.

I really doubt there’s going to be any official acknowledgement of my departure. I have rendered very useful (and hopefully competent) service to my department, but it’s not in the character of this department or any UC department to get overly worked up about teaching or the departures of staff. The situation is somewhat different for the Real Doctor. In general, the real doctors will at the very least go for a nice lunch or a dinner or cake or something. However, despite her imminent departure, no such plans have been made, which the Real Doctor finds a bit discomfiting.

It’s nice to receive recognition for one’s work. I have some evidence that I do an OK job teaching. The Real Doctor is a more-than-minimally-competent physician. Her patients seem to like her, and she takes the time to talk with them. Additionally, she does a lot of service work—organizing journal club, teaching family practice residents, and so forth. To our surprise, we both feel as if we should get some sort of official recognition for transcending mere competence.

We were talking about this during a bike ride the other day. Both of us, as soon as we had this feeling, wondered why we should have it, what exactly we wanted, and whether or not it this desire was morally objectionable. We both do our jobs, and we are both paid—exactly per contract. We are owed neither recognition nor cake. But money isn’t esteem. While money makes the world go ‘round, the esteem of peers lubricates the pivots. It’s not fungible, but it would mean a lot to me and the Real Doctor to get some sort of “good job!” from officialdom. It doesn’t make any sense at all, and it verges on greediness. I know the job I’ve done, and I need no certificate beyond my students being prepared for whatever is next in their lives.

Neither the Real Doctor nor I had a good solution to this puzzle about ourselves. So there it lies, destined in all likelihood to become a snarl of unresolved feelings when we leave in a few weeks.

Friday Flora

Yet another orchid. Encyclia bractescens

What's buried in the garden

The Real Doctor and I are grappling with the frantic business of moving. So far this week, we have met with two realtors, a mover, three painters, and a general contractor. Monday, we meet with a pest inspector and a garden guy.

I’ve been spending some time every day trying to get some of the uglier weeds pulled out of our garden. At this point, it’s not terribly hard. Several years of persistent work have given us some very well established plants, so an hour’s toil makes a good patch of the yard look somewhat presentable. Of course, the garden is a work in progress. There are still plots that just haven’t gelled—something unsuitable got much too established, or something was established but just up and died, leaving a big dead spot. And of course, our neighbors still have vinca and St. Augustine grass, which requires unsleeping vigilance. A decade or so more would have made it perfect.

Leaving our garden will be one of the hardest things about leaving Sacramento. We have a loverly herb garden—just about every herb imaginable, six kinds of thyme, four kinds of oregano, winter savory, summer savory, rosemary, sage, chives, lemon grass, lemon balm, lemon verbena, lovage, horseradish, sorrel, and so on. It’s a joy to the nose, and not bad looking either. The plants are mature, forming nice mounds of deep green, yellow green, emerald green, olive green, gray green, and grass green. Elsewhere in the garden are fruit trees, asparagus, artichoke, the alstroemeria and irises (or irides) that my Mom gave me, and more. These replaced the wilderness of brambles and vinca that greeted us when we moved in.

All the philosophies that I use to console myself advise against attachment. This move is proving a mighty test of philosophical equanimity. Until now, I’ve never really understood attachment to a plot of land. After all, plants will grow in Oregon. But in my backyard here, there’s a bunch of time, a bunch of labor, a bunch of me and the Real Doctor. If you go out past the garage to that patch of lawn she liked to lie down on, and dig down about three feet, you’ll also find the decaying bones one of the best dogs I’ve ever known. So now, I kind of understand why patriots think that one particular bit of the earth’s surface is better than any other similarly endowed acreage.

But it could be worse, and it will get worse. My Mom’s garden is (as has been noted) better than yours, or mine, or pretty much anybody else’s. My parents are getting old and my Dad is infirm and fading into the fog of dementia. Their living situation gives them some hardship, and there are definitely mechanical aspects of their life that would be much improved by moving to an “assisted care facility” as the Real Doctor’s parents recently did. But I think it would destroy my Mom. Separating her from her house and garden—from the mature trees that she planted, from the exquisite collections of bulbs and aloes and succulents, from the landscape that she made—would be separating a body from its heart. Philosophers will counsel against attachment, and the intellect will nod sagely and agree. But reality and the heart can dissent loudly and painfully.

My inner philosopher compels me to note: I will not miss the leaky taps, the ill-fitting doors, the gentle breezes that one can feel indoors on a windy day, the unusable spaces in the kitchen, the three-quarters of the house that is uninsulated, the idiotic, outage-prone electrical system…

The view from academia

XKCD gets it again:

Yesterday I spent three hours talking with former students who were seeking letters of recommendation. Excellent students, they're each getting a "top 5%" letter, but I was amused by how different they are from each other. Typical for UC Davis, one is a caucasian, multi-generation resident of California; one is south asian, 2nd generation; and the other is an immigrant from north Africa. They're each really smart, but I feel like their outstanding performances have widely different origins--one is moved by curiosity for the material itself, one seems to see the material as something that must be absorbed in order to get to a desired goal, and one sees it as a challenge that needs to be bested in single combat. Gotta love diversity.

Now you're thinking with chickens!

I wanted to cook something that required some eggs, so I checked to see how many were in the 'fridge. Not enough. "No problem," thinks I, "I'll just wait a couple of days and then there will be enough."

Unfortunately, this sort of thinking no longer obtains. I eventually realized this, and after a short trip to the store, made some pasta carbonara. I miss my birds. They are apparently finding their way in the pecking order of their new home--a horrible process to human eyes, but I imagine that it is vaguely reassuring to the chicken psyche.

Pretty good skiing for May

Royal Gorge stayed open for one more weekend, so I felt obligated to go and make one last use of my season pass. Also, one last trip around some favorite trails and one last visit with the Wax Curmudgeon and Curmudgeonette before we decamp to Oregon.

There's still TONS of snow in the Sierras. There's one place where the ski trail goes under some telephone wires, and I could have easily snagged them with a ski pole. So, hopefully, I'll get some more skiing in this month, and maybe even in June. One of the highlights of this ski trip was trying out my new back-country skis. They're pure fun: waxless, metal edged, a nice amount of sidecut, and light. (A sharp contrast with my klister-y, rusty-edged, straight and HEAVY older back country skis). I'm unaccustomed to such skis, so I spent an hour on this hill here going up and down. Click on the picture to blow it up and you'll see my beautiful tracks. Telemarking is ridiculously easy on these skis, and I was able to make parallel turns for the first time in my life.

What a winter!

Grade curves are evil, part MCCXXXIV.

Every quarter a number of students ask me, hopefully, if my class is graded on a curve. These students cling to a belief that a curve will somehow help their performance in class. This naive faith is as misguided as the belief that they can successfully absorb a lecture while texting and listening to an iPod. So, I patiently explain that a curve makes their grade dependent upon everybody elses, that it means that their grade communicates nothing about their understanding of the subject, and that the middle of the curve is really and truly a "C". I tell them that they should not want a curve, and that curves are intrinsically evil.

Here's another prop for my argument. It's an article from the NY Times about law schools that hand out lots of merit scholarships, but because they grade on curves, it is mathematically impossible for the majority of the scholarship students to maintain good enough grades to keep their funding. Pretty skanky on the part of the law school, and another reminder that grade curves are intrinsically evil.