It's Wednesday afternoon of my spring break week, and it's time to take stock of my progress.
If you recall, my goals were threefold:
* I want to make the weeks ahead easier.
* I want to come out of the week feeling like I accomplished something.
* I want to spend some time outside.
What I have been doing?
* Working on taxes (almost done)
* Grading papers (half done)
* Course related housekeeping (never ending)
* Taking more neighborhood walks (I know I wanted to get out the neighborhood, but something is better than nothing)
* Getting a physical
* Taking all y'all's recommendations and buying 20 great songs on iTunes (done!)
* Blogging
What haven't I been doing yet?
* Revising the paper
* Writing next week's lectures
* Dealing with my substantial service obligation
* Getting my ironing done (I have no professional clothes to wear because they are all too wrinkly!)
* Getting some meals made for the freezer for those nights when I am too tired to cook
Hmm...I guess I better get busy.
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Wait a second. Spring Break is for drinking dozens of beers, staggering around half naked and drunk off your ass, and shouting "Woooooohooooo!!" every few minutes. What's all this "accomplishing something" shit?
If you lecture in field clothes, that cuts down on the ironing.
Also, following up on physioprof's point, if your want to give your students an appreciation for biofuels and an exercise in quantification, you can have them calculate what percentage of their monthly gasoline budget they managed to drink in the past week, had they chosed to burn that ethanol as fuel instead of imbibing it.
Hey, I wear professional clothes (well, sort of, in the academic sense anyway), and my key shopping rule is: only knit tops (lots of jackets). Consequence, no ironing. Hubby wears button-up shirts, but he is on his own for ironing. He only buys wrinkle-free and is immune to students (high school) who rag on his appearance.
Yes, field clothes it is 2 days a week, or whenever possible. I stopped ironing in 1975 and have been a professor since. Immediately after taking your teaching clothes from the drier, hang them up. Don't worry about the rest. On cool days, have a sweater handy to cover up a wrinkle or two if you are concerned about your meeting with an administrator. On hot days, use that spare top you have hanging in your office under your lab coat or in the back of your file drawer. Have a clean, wrinkle-free lab coat hung up in your lab or office for the unpremeditated clothing disasters.
I have a big pile of naturally crinkly shirts that are supposed to look creased. With a t-shirt/cami underneath, and jacket on top (and cord jackets don't need ironing). Field clothes are useful but not if you want to project a professional image, which is useful for emphasizing your authority, and being vaguely fashionable is good to help the students identify with you as a young female professor. If you look young you need every trick in the book to underline authority.