A Very Pleasant Surprise

A while back, I wrote a post soliciting advice on how to approach my department chair for a promotion. My underlying assumption was that nobody in my department had the inclination or bandwidth to keep track of when a junior, non-tenure track faculty member was due for promotion, and that if I wanted to be promoted, I'd have to fight for it.

Several commenters went even further, advising that I'd have to get other job offers in order to have any negotiating power. So I decided I would first get my next few manuscripts published, then do a job search to (hopefully) get some offers before approaching my chair about this.

Well, a few weeks ago, I got a cryptic email from my chair asking for my full CV in some crazy, super-special format that I've never seen before. A few emails got sent back-and-forth and...well, basically I have it in writing from my chair that he will put me up for promotion as soon as I get those manuscripts published.

!!!

He said I was not the only junior, non-tt faculty being considered for promotion, and that he and the other senior faculty wanted to do this "because that's the right thing to do."

!!!

That wasn't the only reason, of course--promoting us would also make us more competitive for NIH grants, which would benefit the department and the senior faculty for whom we non-tt faculty work. So it's not purely out of the goodness of their hearts and all, but I've still got a pretty good warm-and-fuzzy feeling going.

First Meeting With An Old Friend

I've been a bad, bad blogger. I'm not sure why, but blogging is sort of an all-or-nothing kind of activity for me. Either I'm really into it and spend a lot of time posting and reading other blogs, or I get distracted by real-life activities and drop off the blogosphere completely for long periods of time.

I started getting the itch to blog again last night while I was out drinking with a colleague who knows I blog. He was trying to convince me to try Twitter and I was arguing that blogging offered so much more flexibility in format and content, and therefore allowed better interaction with the community.

Anyway, he failed to convince me to tweet and I failed to convince him to blog. But I totally managed to talk myself into posting again! And the post which is way overdue is, of course, about my meet-up with Cath@VWXYNot?, who is one of my favorite bloggers and oldest blog-friends.

Cath has already written a great post about it, so I'll just say that it was an absolutely awesome afternoon! The company and conversation were fantastic. I think both our blogging personalities are pretty similar to our real-life ones, so there was definitely a feeling of falling back into a comfortable and familiar relationship--old friends meeting for the first time.

And the kayaking...oh my god, the kayaking was so much fun! Okay, so the wind and waves were a wee bit stronger than I had expected, and it was definitely a good thing I didn't have to carry anything heavy the next day...but it was exhilarating. And I saw a friggin' seal that wasn't in a glass tank! I enjoyed it so much I've been searching for places to kayak here. I did find one nearby...in a man-made lake in the middle of a park. Not remotely the same thing, but maybe it's okay for a quick fix until I can visit Cath's city again.

So Cath, thanks for a great time! Hey, when are you going to put your nice, shiny new passport to use again and come down here???

PubMed Fun

Tired of boring PubMed searches for papers in your field? Go check out NCBI ROFL!

I Am Writing To Inform You That I Am About To Disagree With You

I was catching up on the gazillion blog posts piled up in my Google Reader this afternoon and came across something interesting in the comment thread to a post^*. My understanding of the opinion expressed in the thread is that if Blogger A disagrees with something Blogger B wrote in a post, Blogger A must first express his/her disagreement in a comment on Blogger B's original post before Blogger A may write his/her own post on the issue.

Really? Is this a rule of blogging etiquette with which I'm completely unfamiliar? Cuz I'm about to disagree with another blogger and, you know, I wouldn't want to do it the wrong way!

The way I see it is that everything written on a public blog is fair game for other bloggers to link to and post about as they choose. I write all my posts with the realization that anyone who reads them may comment on them or write his/her own posts in response. These comments or posts may agree with me, disagree with me, extend the discussion further or in a different direction, or any combination of the above.

I don't expect other bloggers who write posts in response to mine to first ask for my permission or even to give me notice of what they are about to do. As long as they link to my post so I can go over and thank them for the link or defend myself, as the case may be, I'm cool with it.

This is not to say that I think bloggers should get in the habit of essentially flaming each other on their respective blogs. But if another blogger writes something that I disagree with, I may either say so in a comment or write a "rebuttal" post, depending on the nature of the disagreement, my relationship with that particular blogger, and the length of what I have to say.

So what do the rest of you think? If I'm thinking of writing a post disagreeing with something another blogger wrote, am I obligated to first leave a comment detailing the nature of my disagreement? If that blogger responds positively to my comment, am I no longer allowed to write my post? If my rebuttal is likely to be very long, is it sufficient to leave a comment giving notice of my intent to write a new post on the matter? Or can we just accept that we are sometimes going to disagree with each other and dispense with having to inform people with whom we disagree that we are about to disagree?

^*I am not disclosing the blog post or the bloggers who wrote the specific comments so as not to be calling out specific bloggers. You'll just have to take my word for it that I'm not making this up!

Introducing The Gryphon

I haven't been around the blogosphere much lately. This is partly because I've been busy putting out fires at work (oh, the drama) and partly because my non-work time has been completely monopolized by a furry, four-legged beast!

Yes, March Hare and I have adopted another dog from the Humane Society. Everyone, meet Gryphon, our 5-month-old golden retriever mix:


The first few days we had her, she was quiet and docile and did not have any accidents in the house. And we thought, "Wow, we got a mellow dog and she's already fully housetrained!"

Then, she started getting used to being with us...and suffice it to say that she is neither mellow nor completely housetrained. She's been terrorizing the birds in our backyard--I don't think she realizes yet that she can't climb trees--and has completely destroyed one of the cables for our game console. But she's settling in nicely and is a really sweet and affectionate dog.

We are lucky to have gotten two wonderful doggy companions--Dormouse and Gryphon--from animal shelters. There are many more shelter dogs looking for a good home, so if anyone is thinking about getting a dog, please consider adopting one!