Faculty activity
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Day in review August 27, 2015
I have yet another headache. It is making me short tempered and judgmental. Someone is sitting near me that had an odor that isn’t helping. I’m listening to the guy next to me discuss with his kid, the editorial changes he made to his homework. There are more than a few that are on the rush hour train taking up extra seats. Earlier today, I was supposed to spend about six hours at a variety of clincal shadowing experiences, but I was stood up (essentially). It left me with a free day, but I didn’t use it as productively as I would like. Which always brings me back to the…
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First orientation with data managment done
Today is the first of a series of orientations. My colleges are in session and classes start on Monday. I have spend some serious time since RDAP thinking of how to incorporate an introduction to data managment into their sessions. Conceptually I thought this was important because I wanted the seed of these practices, and the ways we could support them in this effort to be there in the begining. The harder part was figuring out what to cut. I already have a full plate with a basic orientation to accessing materials, and I usually hit PubMed pretty hard since that is their main database. Typical session send them thorugh a…
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Day in review July 29, 2015
We are finally into the heat of summer. I am sitting on my final train grateful that it is air conditioned. Biking to work has been easy simply because I get a breeze. Workouts have been erratic. I had headaches that kept me home from work and doctors appointments that have kept me home other days. I’m just getting back into it. I bought a knee brace with the intention to try running again. And I have an ankle cuff that will allow me to use the weight tower instead of the machines for my inner/outer legs. This mornings workout, the first with the ankle cuff, is probably the reason…
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Day in review June 16, 2015
Wednesday has become my day of sleep. I get to the middle of the week and my energy flags, productivity goes down, and basic tasks can take all day. On top of that, today my stomach didn’t like the rice noodles I tried to feed it for a snack. I haven’t felt ill, but something isn’t right. Today work wrapped up a couple of projects I had been working on. Each was different aspects of the same proposal. The first part landed in mine and a colleague’s lap five weeks ago. We were tasked with updating a previous document on information seeking behaviors of clinician’s of all types. We then…
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Day in review June 9, 2015
The beginning of the day went well. Research was tedious because it was data gathering. I had a hard time paying attention and will have to do some coding and cleaning of the data before I can use it. I truly had no idea how many different types of degrees and certificates can be offered. Evaluating each of these programs takes a certain amount of discernment that I hadn’t anticipated, but it is slowing me down. There will be a lot of data to play with when I’m done. I hope that it will yield some meaningful connections to the library. I fear I may need to learn some scripting/coding…
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Monday problems
Today I got back to the meta-analysis that I was working on. I reviewed my notes and my original search structure. Next was adapting it to the vocabulary of the next database. The run produced similar results in terms of numbers. Unfortunately, I was stumped by the inability to save or export the list in an RIS format. I left it hanging while I went to a faculty meeting. When I got back, I had a sympathetic, but overall unhelpful customer service agent at Elsevier. She couldn’t do anything for me. The only explanation I got was a “system-wide” outage that hadn’t been resolved. The recommended that clear the cache,…
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Day in review June 5, 2015
Friday, today, ended in a meeting. The day started with a meeting too. Everything in between was a mash of email maintenance and opportunity. By the end of today, I realized that I will be working on four papers, if not five. It really makes me wish I was on the tenure clocka bit, becuae there is the possibility that these won’t count for me. I doesn’t matter. I am taking the opportunities that are in front of me. Right now I feel as if I am saying “yes” to everything. Not sustainable in the long term, but good for now in the sense that I have little to lose.…
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Day in review May 29, 2015
Good news on the employment front. It looks very good that my contract will be renewed. I’ll be happy when I have the contract in hand, but this is as good as it’s going to get until the budget gets in and things get signed. That said, it feels good that I can focus on planning for the year. Some thing I have been trying to do for a month. My current time has been taken up with preparing for this weeks lecture and working on the regional NN/LM proposal. I am working with a colleague on this and will be turning in a draft of it on Monday. I…
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Day in Review May 27, 2015
Today was the first day of my Divvy riding. I successfully, and enjoyably, rode from Union station a half mile west to my library. I don’t think it saved me any time, but I think it will save me some money and give me some exercise at the same time. I went to the gym and at least I feel like I’ve had a full workout. I figure that if I use Divvy three times a week to work, that’s saved me minimum $24 per month. Four times is $32. At that price, if I bike for two months, I break even. I don’t mention riding back from work, because…
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Day in review May 26, 2015
I came to work today feeling the psychlogical weight of all the work I had to do. I had a list (overly ambitious) of a few that I wanted ot knock off over the weekend. I figured that a weekend at my mom’s house would have enough down time. If not that, then the holiday would give me the room I needed. But it didn’t. I was tired the whole weekend. The funeral for Donald was quiet and quick. But it was draining just the same. The emotional energy it takes being around my mother, circumstance notwithstanding, is always tiring. Then there was the drive home, dropping off the sister,…