http://chung2pizz.wordpress.com Just another WordPress.com weblog Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:57:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/7b73fdb9517e2805cd65721ddd7c8bd0?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.png http://chung2pizz.wordpress.com http://chung2pizz.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/one-of-the-things-they-dont-teach-you/ http://chung2pizz.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/one-of-the-things-they-dont-teach-you/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:55:20 +0000 jpizzolato http://chung2pizz.wordpress.com/?p=317 Continue reading →]]>

Thanks to a few key mentors I feel like I was exceptionally well prepared for the job market when I was looking for my first job out of grad school. I’d been put on track to publish a couple of things and to present at the key conferences. I’d been introduced to key players in my subfield. And my mentors looked over my job talk, and helped me prep my statement/letter, and they were really helpful to me when I was negotiating the first time. One of these mentors was particularly helpful and had me send her what I was thinking about asking for. She helped me come up with a list of other important and exciting things I didn’t know I could even ask for. She encouraged me to be a serious negotiator. It worked. I got a great deal at Pitt.

When I went on the market again, three years later, I talked with her again. She helped me prep for my interview out here UCLA. She listened to me when I was all freaked out about the process, and what if I didn’t like it, and what if I didn’t get it, and what if I got it but realized I didn’t like the people. Fortunately I got the job and I liked the people. She went to UCLA for her graduate program, and she had some really good info on the place. And the guy who was chairing the search committee here, was part of the search committee that first hired her at MSU. It’s all kinds of incestuous. When I got the job offer, she again helped me think through my negotiation, which was especially important because at that time it was pretty clear that California, the UCs and UCLA were not rich.

Now I’m here and I really like it here. I did well with the negotiations, and I’m happy. But. I’m not rich. I have a limited amount of money to spend on my advisees. I have two I need to keep funding, and I could have 2 new ones next year. And I might have more money soon, but I don’t have it now, and now is when the negotiations begin with the accepted doc students for next year’s cohort.

Funnily, now I’m in a funny position. There is one student I’m dying to have join my team because the student is about as perfect a match for me on paper and in person as is possible. (We’ve met.) Seriously. It feels a little like a once in a lifetime opportunity to have this kind of match. So. How do I negotiate with this student so I can secure the student for my team…while not going broke on this one? That’s the trick. I’ve already talked to my academic-financial mentor who has helped me so much in the past. She’s still providing some great help and insight. But there’s a catch this time…this student is her former advisee and they’re also doing a lot of talking about the student’s doc program decisions. We’re both being advised by the same person…who is great at giving negotiation advice. This could be an interesting throwdown. The only real advantage I feel like I have is that I can offer the student the best match interest wise for doctoral training…so I suppose I have something that the student wants. And I think that the student is likely to come, but I don’t want to bank on that. I want to win this one. So…maybe I’ll have to spend more than I might actually need to…but I think it’ll be worth it.

Gah! No one really schooled us (as doc students) about how much of this whole academia thing is really banking, management, and business negotiations.

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It’s Friday!

It’s been a long week of rain, deep puddles, and crazy Angelenos who don’t know how to survive rain. They act like it’s a blizzard that brings not only feet of snow, but lots of ice. They also do not have the appropriate attire for rain. Too many dumb girls think that boots = rainboots. This is not true. Especially if your boots are Uggs. Then you just end up with giant wet furry feet. Gross. They also act like the rain (a) has been going on for a month, and (b) will never end. I’d like the rain to end too. But I don’t think it’s really that bad. I mean, the rest of the year it’s sunny. We can probably all handle five days of rain.

Today is hailed in the OC.

One of my grad students just came in and said, “I had no idea that snow was so noisy and hard!” I had to break it to her that what she experienced was hail. Not snow. It can’t snow when it’s this warm. I know it feels cold, but it’s almost 50.

This afternoon I’m going back to The Modern Dog to get a new bed for my dog. Moosh keeps wanting to sit on my big white ottoman. I think he likes it because it is tall and so he can sit up higher and see over the back wall into the yard. But. It’s white. So I need a way to cover it up to protect it a little from any more damage from him. @ The Modern Dog they sell beds that should cover it all up. So I’m going to get him only of those pillow-y beds.

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On Monday my smoke detector went off for 10 hours. Every minute for 10 hours. That’s super annoying. I called it in FOUR times and every time was told that they couldn’t tell me when it was going to be fixed. On the third time I was told that maybe I should stand outside (in the rain) so I couldn’t hear it. That’s not OK. The 4th time they said no one was going to come and fix it that night. At that point I ripped it out of the ceiling. now. There is a hole and wires dangling down. But there’s also no squawking noise. So I’m OK with that. This, on top of how long it took for them to fix my bathroom floor mold problem, and the fact that no one has ever come to fix my doorhandle (that broke off over the holidays), is making me reconsider where I want to live next year. I have to move this summer. And before I was hoping to move based on location of the apartment. Now I think I’ll move to an apartment that has the least amount of existing maintenance problems…and the best track record for not getting flooded in the rain, and being built OK.

It is raining. Still. I’m sort of over the rain, and I’m fairly sure that today I will have to walk home in the pouring rain.

It’s been a meeting bonanza this quarter. It’s admission time, and we run three programs, and a lot of people who are qualified apply. Also, a lot of people who are questionable qualified, but who think it would be nice to live in LA apply. Needless to say there are a lot of files to read and a lot of long meetings to go to for decision making purposes.

I lost my bruin card this morning. I dropped it after I left my apartment, and made it around the corner. By the time I got back it was gone. So I had to buy a new one for $23. At first I was irked that it cost that much, and such a random amount. Then…I decided that $23 for all the free stuff the card gives me access to was probably worth it.

I started watching Inglorious Bastards this morning and I thought I wouldn’t like it. But I did. And then I had to leave to come to work. So I don’t know how it ended.

Mooshu eats the snails that come out when it rains. And then they don’t agree with him and he throws up. Most of the time I can get the snails out. But that’s gross. And sometimes I can’t get them out. And that’s also gross. It’s a lose-lose situation.

I wish it were summer.

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This week I’m seriously thankful that it’s Friday. It hasn’t been a particularly busy or stressful week. I’ve just felt blechy. I thought I was over the headaches yesterday, but I’ve had one all day/since waking up today.

I’m really happy about this 3 day weekend. i have some social things planned (note: I say social. Fun is still up in the air), such as this surprise date tonight and a Little Tokyo tour on Sunday.

Mooshu discovered pine cones today and he’s pretty convinced they are the most fun thing ever. I think he’d run into traffic to chase down a pine cone. He carried one around, dropped it, chased it, and played with it for our whole walk tonight.

I’m hoping that this weekend will be a combination of restful and productive. I’m starting tomorrow with a run at the beach with JoeAnn, so this date better get up here soon so we can have the date and I can come home, I want to do 7 miles in the morning, and we’re leaving at 8:30. Then…I’m hoping to spend the better part of the day doing data entry and finally cleaning our data set.

Maybe hoping is the wrong word. I need to do this. I don’t really like to do this. But I’ve rented myself some movies on my Tivo and I plan to sit on my sofa, watch movies, and do data entry. Will the movie watching slow my data entry speed? Probably. Well. Definitely. On the other hand, without the movies, I might just decide to give up and go to sleep. And I really need this project to be over and this is the last of the data that needs to be entered before we can move through this last paper and move on. Oh…and somewhere in the midst of all that movie watching and data entry I plan on taking Moosh on a big walk since we’re expecting rain all week next week, and Moosh is anti-rain. We’ll see how it all goes tomorrow!

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I’m exhausted.

Like as in, I’ve been not-functional-exhausted for a few days now. I get up, I do some work. And then? By lunchtime I feel like I will just die if I don’t nap. So I nap. For HOURS.

On Tuesday I sat down just for a minute and the next thing I knew I’d slept through all of my office hours. Good thing there weren’t students who were trying to get into my hours.

Yesterday I slept for 2.5 hours in the middle of the day.

And I still went to bed around 10:30. (It’d have been earlier except that there was some campus safety hoopla on campus and that kept me up.) And I slept until 7 this morning…and didn’t get up until just before 8.

The good news? Today is the first time I haven’t had a headache in about a week and a half. And I’m awake still. I’m tired, but I’m not dead tired the way I was the past few days. So maybe I was just a little sick and I didn’t know it?

Maybe.

In other news…

I think I just got promoted on Monday. I mean, it’s not official yesterday, but I heard the vote went well. Woot! Another step on the scale and some more money in my pay check. (At the UCs there are steps to be promoted through within each rank.)

This makes me think that I’m pretty much definitely going to go with going up for tenure not next year, but the year afterwards.

I had coffee with my division head yesterday and he confirmed that going up early was a good plan.

So until then, or at least for the next year, I need to be productive to get things out the door and done up right. And then, maybe I’ll be moved along to that tenured space.

Tomorrow I have a surprise date with that guy from before. I don’t know about surprise dates for the second date. But we’ll see. Maybe it’ll be a good surprise. Maybe.

Last night I went to a test kitchen for dinner, and it was super cool. The food was amazing. It only cost $5 for dinner. And you needed a password to get in, and you ate in the living room of the peoples’ place. Mmmm! I’d totally go again. It was Asian-Latin fusion type food, and it was so flavorful and tasty.

The dog is protesting his food. For about a week now he has not eaten any of his food unless it’s given to him in an activity ball or strewn on the floor. Then he’s more interested. But still only marginally. And apparently he’s caught on to the fact that he’s being tricked into eating his food because yesterday he hid the activity ball feeder, and now I can’t find it.

The only time he eats voraciously is when Shiloh comes over. Michele brings Shiloh’s food with Shiloh whenever Shiloh comes over (Shiloh is also not eating.) Then when the two of them are together they go crazy for each other’s food. It’s crazy. They eat like maniacs. And we think they totally hold out on us with their own food in hopes that they’ll get each other’s food. The best part? They eat the EXACT same food. Apparently they just like the conquest. Dumb.

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With all the hoopla around airport security in Canada (i.e. the no carry on rule), and the fact that the airlines I’d be flying still don’t waive the checked luggage fee…and just the general annoyance of the whole customs bit in airports, I’m seriously reconsidering how I’m going to make my trip to Canada in March.

I was just going to do a quick fly in, talk, fly out, but it’s hard as heck to get to and from where I’m going there in any reasonable amount of time (read two stop overs in the US before ever reaching Canada). And it’s expensive!

It’s about $250 cheaper for me to fly into Bangor, ME and than where I’m headed in Canada.

So. I’m seriously considering flying to ME and then driving across the border so I can have my luggage, computer, computer cord, and other stuff with me. Yeah it’s a little bit of a drive. But still. I don’t think I’d mind. I haven’t been to ME in ages, and the drive over to where I’m going looks like it might be quite pretty. Plus I’m essentially on summer break by that time in March, so maybe I’ll just make a trip of it…

Oy.

Stupid underpants bomber for making the Canadians feel like they need to keep you from carrying anything on the plane.

And really if it was a direct flight I’d probably just suck it up.

But the idea of spending hours on layovers with no stuff sounds un-fun.

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It’s first week here at UCLA. (Here they refer to passing time by the week it is in the quarter.)

Usually first week is a little hectic with back to school things, but is otherwise OK because nothing is too ramped up.

Except this first week.

It’s been loony toons.

Probably this is partially because I’m teaching two classes this quarter (something I haven’t done since fall semester of my last semester at Pitt). & I have a TA for each one. The TAs themselves are lovely and will be wonderful, but getting things off the ground with two people is always a little more labor intensive than with just one.

The other kink in this week is that I’m trying to get all the admissions stuff done. Yesterday I finished the applicants for one program. Too bad there are two more programs of applicants to review. But. I’m pretending they’re not there until next week.

And Fridays are usually my free, lite day, but not this week. This week we’re doing admissions. And I’m meeting with one of my TAs before then to do some work on our class for next week.

Thursdays are usually pretty lite too, but I’ve been in meetings since 9 this morning, and have more from 3-5 today.

Fortunately I have nothing big on my agenda this weekend. I’m running a 5K down in Irvine on Saturday morning. Then I just plan to be in my office doing work for the rest of the weekend. Me and Moosh. In the office. Woot. What a weekend.

In other news?

The dog thinks he’s a person. He now sleeps right up next to me, on his back, with his head on the second swedish memory foam pillow. When I wake up in the morning and turn toward him, he looks at me with one eye and then goes back to sleep. When the parental unit comes out, Tom gets that pillow.

The dog also has impressed me with his smarts. I always thought he was a little dumb. But now I think maybe it’s just that he’s a puppy. Lately he’s been doing smart things. Like figuring out that he has to walk on the same side of a pole as I am. And I took a toy away from him and Shiloh because they were fighting over it in the yard. I put it on top of the grill. Moosh could see it there, and instead of just sitting by it and howling (his normal behavior for letting me know he wants something), he sat and looked. And I think he thought. And then he jumped his whole self onto a narrow little wall/ledge, and leaned up against the grill to get the toy off with his teeth. Then he fell down and lost the toy. But he kept going at it until he got the toy. Cute. And so smart!

I’m back to having a research team that can meet regularly. I like that. It keeps me more in check. We met this morning.

I just did my health assessment for UCLA (online), so now I’m looking forward to getting a KitchenAid stand mixer for $100 off. I love that they still do this promotion.

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After yesterday being epically long…from 5:30AM-11:30PM nonstop…and then still needing to do work before bed, I decided I could not get up and run this morning. I figured I would just go in the afternoon.

Then…today got away from me.

I got up at 6:30, was at work by 8:30, and was teaching at 9. That went until 11, and then I did admissions application reviewing…until 6:30 tonight. Holy hell. That’s a long time of reading why all these people want to come to graduate school and why their recommenders think they’d be awesome. Or not.

Best part? I’m still not even done, so I have to go back to it again tomorrow.

I came at home at 6:30 to go running before the 8:30 firedrill.

And I got home, and thought to myself, “That sounds like not my dog barking behind my door.”

And in fact, it was not my dog. It was my dog and his friend Shiloh.

Then I found that Michele had left me a note that she was leaving Shiloh with me for the evening.

This was fine, except for it seemed a little hot mess to have two dogs out at the firedrill.

& I was fine with it, but I had to try to figure out whether I had time to walk both of them (because they take infinitely longer to pee and poop when they’re being walked together rather than separately) and go running before the firedrill.

I decided to go get my mail while I worked out the logistics in my head.

On my way I encountered A LOT of standing water in the hall outside my door.

So when I got to the front desk to pick up my mail, I told the kid at the desk that there was standing water in the hall, and that the water was rushing into the IT supply room.

He was all, “HUH?”

So I repeated it.

And then, no joke, he whipped out a pink “While you were out” pad and wrote down “Standing water in hall.”

Seriously? So I tell him that maybe he should tell someone about it.

And he’s all, “I’m a substitute here I don’t really know what to do.”

And that was that. I got my mail. And left.

But the water was getting more and more, and it was quite something on my way back down.

At that point I figured I couldn’t run because I had the firedrill coming (when the dogs need evacuation), and maybe a flood coming up to my door.

So I stayed in.

And about 30 minutes later, the RD called and said, “So there’s a flood in the hall and you probably shouldn’t try to open your front door. If you need to leave you’ll have to go out the backyard.” Also…he told me that the water had been shut off and would be off for a few hours.

Awesome.

And then Michele came, picked up Shiloh, and Moosh and I went out back to pee.

And then I decided that today was over, it was time to just go to bed and restart tomorrow.

So I’m in bed. I’m eating the Diddy Reese that Michele brought me. And I’m watching Biggest Loser. Hot mess.

I’m about to take the dog back out for one last pee, and then that’s it. I’m calling it a night. See you all tomorrow.

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It’s mostly nice weather here in LA…especially in comparison to the rest of the country most days of the year.

But lately it’s been especially nice. Days in the mid 70s, nights in the 50s. That’s windows open all the time weather.

Yesterday my two friends Casey & Kacy from grad school were in town and we got to hang out together, eat too much, and walk around a lot. We had Thai for lunch, followed by boba. Then they both had donuts from Stan’s, which, apparently, is famous. Me? I hate donuts. They’re like eating fatty rocks to me. Still they thought they were great. Then we walked all around campus, laid around my apartment, played with my dog, and eventually took Kacy back to Glendale, and the other Casey, Marc, & I went to Manhattan Beach for too much sushi…and a long walk on the beach.

It’s crazy because we spent the whole day in t-shirts, jeans and flip flops. At night we added sweatshirts, but no coats. And it’s January. And we were frolicking at the beach. It’s good to a Southern Californian these days.

And this morning I picked up Marc at 6AM and we went down to Santa Monica and did 6.5 miles along the ocean…and watched the sun come up. It’s really quite a gorgeous time to run. The sky is all dark when you start, but the pier is all lit up, and you can see all the lights of the houses in the mountains. And then the sky gets all orange, pink, and red, and the sun comes up over the water. It’s fairly impressive. That, plus the fact that the beach is SO flat compared to the regular running I do in Westwood, made the 6.5 miles feel pretty easy. My hamstrings feel a little tight, but I felt good and ran at about a 9.30 minute mile. So not fast. But a good pace for a good morning run early in my return to running.

Now? Now it’s gorgeous. The kids are back so the campus is buzzing with first day of class anticipation. Or dread. Still. There’s a buzz. The dining halls are open so I’m back to free lattes in the morning. I’m in a skirt, short sleeved top, and flip flops (which I’ll trade for heels for class), and my windows in my office are flung open.

Here’s to hoping all the sunshine, exercise, and recent fun mean today is going to be a good day. & that the quarter will go well.

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Today was the first day of a new decade.

I started off with a relaxing early morning and a good run.

Wait. Let’s qualify that. The run was good in that I’m just getting back to running after the fall injuries & illnesses, and so I’m way behind my best times. I’m running a 5K next weekend and I really just want to run it in less than 30 minutes. So…a little less than 10 minutes a mile. When I first started this quest, over break, I was running the 3.14 miles in about 34 minutes. Suck. But today I did it in 29.42. Woot! That was the good part. The bad part, I felt like my chest was going to burst out of my chest from the exertion at one part. And I’m fairly sure I looked a serious hot mess walking back up the Saxon Steps to my apartment. Seriously. So. Between now and next Saturday I need to just keep at it. I should be able to make my goal. I’m going to swim tomorrow, do the elliptical on Sunday, and then do a long run Monday, a shorter (3 miles) fast run on Tuesday, swim on Wednesday, jog on Thursday, and swim on Friday. Saturday I should be ready to go.

After the run I met up with JoeAnn for brunch and writing in Brentwood. It was a beautiful day here. So we sat outside at the Coral Tree Cafe, ate, and worked. And we really worked. I managed to get all the coding outlined for the analyses for my AERA paper. I finished up the paperwork and summaries for the grant I’m turning in tomorrow (due by Monday @ 3). & I outlined the next grant proposal I’m hoping to send out before the end of the month. So that was productive.

This afternoon the Buckeyes won the Rose Bowl. Shiloh and Mooshu had a fabulous time together all day & afternoon. We went on a walk together, and Mooshu took off to say hello to some other dogs, and he pulled with such force, and I was so not prepared for the pull because I was picking up Shiloh’s poop, that by the time I grabbed hard at the leash, he was going at full tilt, and actually broke his collar off. So I had to fashion up a collar so I could get home on the leash. Hot mess. But we all made it home.

Tonight? I went on a mildly successful date. I saw Up in the Air, which was awesome and really made me think about my own life, and got another holiday drink at Starbucks.

All in all it was a big day. Good run, and productive both academically/professionally and socially/personally. Hopefully this all is foreshadowing how 2010 could be.

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