12 months of accidental remediation

It's the end of the year. Time for the 12 months meme - what's the first line (and link to the post) for the first post of each month?

I've been tagged by Silver Fox, so here goes:

I had a spectacularly unproductive year, blogging-wise, so I'm stretching the rules a little. If I had a post that didn't say anything except for apologizing for being absent, I picked the next one. If I had a first line or two saying the same thing, I picked the next line.

January:

Last year, I mentioned some resolutions. So how'd I do?

February:

In the past I've had long-term field assignments in very small towns or very depressed areas; places with a minimal selection of places to eat.

March:

Ok, I'm back! And boy, did I miss out on some geology-related stuff.

April:

Every spring when it finally warms up and I get into the field, I think, gee, this weather's terrific!

May:

In environmental consulting, most of the gear is paid for by the company: the equipment, the supplies, the use of a vehicle for fieldwork (or reimbursement for using your own - my least favorite option).

June:

In her recent discussion of journal clubs, FSP mentions that she considers the process of dissecting a paper (not necessarily in a savage or overly negative way) to be a critical skill.

July:

I'm still catching up on my blog reading, so this is a late response to Brazen Hussy's post about the disappointing result of her job search.

August:

Here's my excuse for being AWOL: it's really frickin' hot out.

September:

I seem to be on a scheduling kick in my recent posts, but I just read Isis's post about working hours for grad students and it reminded me of my own experience.

October:

I'm in a motel room now, nursing a minor burn on my knee.

November:

Chris Rowan is moving to the US, following his 3rd postdoc.

December:

I got a new GPS with traffic avoidance software to replace the old Garmin, which lasted less than 2 years (that's a story for later).

300 posts

It took me an embarrassingly long time to get to 300 posts... and then I got all the way up to 306 before realizing it was time for a word cloud! For comparison, the other two are here and here.

Here's the word cloud for the last 105 (give or take) posts. "Need work" is oddly apropos, as is "long field".

I had a great time reading back and collating all those entries over the last year or so - I had 40 pages when they were all together!

Hopefully, it won't take as long to get to 400...

pacing problems

FSP has an interesting post today about pacing while lecturing.

I tend not to move around too much while lecturing, which is funny because in almost any other situation I am extraordinarily twitchy. I go on long, fast walks while talking on the cell phone in the field and invariably find myself hundreds of feet from paper and pen when I need them. I tend to work very intensely in the office (with one or both feet madly tapping) and then pop up at random to release tension. I am incapable of sitting still.

So why am I so stationary when I'm lecturing or leading a meeting?

I communicate much more easily by writing than by speaking - it takes me more effort to organize my thoughts. Connecting with an audience and presenting a coherent system is a real effort for me, so when I lecture, I focus intensely on what I'm doing. I'm also acutely aware of how friggin' young I appear, so in an attempt at projecting gravitas, I tend to move very deliberately.

Maybe when I'm old and totally comfortable with audiences, I'll revert to being a spaz while teaching. Until then, I probably won't be distracting my students by pacing around the room.

suburban expeditions

I got a new GPS with traffic avoidance software to replace the old Garmin, which lasted less than 2 years (that's a story for later). One of my common travel routes is often clogged up with traffic and the new GPS routes me through some interesting neighborhoods.

Here's my problem: my GPS's favorite shortcut is through a very posh neighborhood that inexplicably has a ford across a stream. That's right, instead of going under a little culvert (it's a very narrow road), the stream crosses over some very broad, flat rocks that make up the road. Earlier this week, I followed my GPS directions along this road, only to find a big barricade up with a sign that said "ford closed for winter".

The problem is, I can't find any way to tell this GPS "don't take this road". So I ended up turning around and threading my way through all sorts of back roads parallel to the stream (and my sense of direction is terrible) while the GPS kept yelling at me to turn around already!

Eventually, I'll figure out how to get around this area without the GPS. Or the ford will reopen after the winter. It's even odds which will happen first...

cruisin'

I tend to drive a lot for fieldwork. I also have bad knees, partially because of genetics and partially because I developed repetitive stress injuries in high school and college. So the length of time I can hold out before stopping and taking breaks (and therefore, how long it takes to go somewhere) depends on how long my knees hold out.

Cruise control is a godsend. I last less than an hour without it, and I can go at least 4 hours (or until I run out of gas) using it. I put the car in cruise control as much as possible, even if it means just for a minute or two. I'm guessing that the first major thing to wear out in my car will be the cruise control system, if that's possible.

So, one of my pet peeves is getting stuck behind someone who doesn't use cruise control, even though I know they have it. I start creeping up behind someone, so I change lanes. That causes them to realize that there's another car about to pass them, so they do what? They speed up. I hate, hate, hate hanging out in the passing lane without passing someone (plus, it's illegal in most states), so I'll drop back. 30 seconds later, the other car slides back to their original speed. Usually I get fed up and accelerate way past all reason so that I make sure that I leave them behind.

I'm going to be driving about 8 hours (give or take 2 or 3, depending on the traffic gods) tomorrow to get to my parents' for thanksgiving. I have a feeling that my knees are not going to be happy tomorrow night.

who needs to write?

I did some catching up on my blog reading and tripped across a comment that suggested that most jobs don't require any ability to write well (it was buried somewhere in the NYTimes freakonomics blog archives, if you're curious). It went unchallenged and the conversation continued, but it made me wonder - for your average job that requires a college degree, how much writing is expected?

Most of my job experience has been either in the environmental consulting business or in academia, and I've held several somewhat overlapping roles in both. In all cases, I needed to be able to write to a certain standard, whether that was specifications that were clear and didn't have contradictory information, reports that didn't make the company look incompetent, or powerpoint slides that were easily understandable. Oh yeah, and that 100-page thesis.

If my writing had been terrible or merely bad enough to be annoying to fix, I probably would have gotten jobs similar to what I ended up with (although not my first job in consulting - that came with a writing test because they'd been burned by functionally illiterate scientists before), and I probably would have gotten into grad school somewhere. But I would have been one the first people let go (if you can write fast and well, you become indispensable to lots of people) when times got rough, and I wouldn't have moved into a management position at a relatively young age.

Maybe my experience is atypical. So how much writing do you need to do for your job? Is writing "well" (however it's defined) important?

nice doggy?

As part of my consulting work, I occasionally found myself inside homes, sampling their air or their tap water. I met with a large number of dogs.

Most of the dogs I've met have been pretty happy to see me, whether they were small yappy dogs or large overly enthusiastic dogs ("Oof! Down boy!"). I did meet with one mama rottweiler who was guarding an elderly relative who was alone in the house, and the dog made it very clear that I was not going to go upstairs. Fortunately, I didn't have to go there! The only ones that I really worried about were a pair of extremely skittish and very young (think full-grown but not filled out) rottweilers that had recently been rescued.

My mother has a paralytic fear of dogs, which was understandable because she was attacked by an off-leash guard dog that had been trained to attack without warning. She transferred that fear to me when I was younger, reinforced by some bad experiences that I had. Note to owners of large dogs: if your dog associates stuffed animals with "doggy toy", then you'd better make damn sure your dog is under control so it doesn't aggressively chase after random toddlers on the playground, rip their favorite stuffed bear out of their hands, and mangle it. I didn't get over my fear of dogs until I was in high school and finally outweighed the average large dog.

Entering a house with the clear owner's permission usually means I won't have any trouble at all with the dogs (or other pets). I've been fortunate in that I've dealt mostly with residents and homeowners who are more or less ok with my presence, so I haven't had dogs set on me or been chased out...yet.