Ingrid, Jude, and I are all young scholars in related fields. Today we talked about the challenges of finding an audience for our work and how audience might determine, in large part, who we are as researchers. We shared horror stories of meeting conference deadlines and the loneliness of dissertation writing. We compared notes on job hunts and what to do with dissertations once they’re written. We traded citations and names of interesting researchers. We even talked about how facts on the internet are sometimes wrong. This all may sound boring or typical for academics, but remember that writing one’s dissertation is a lonely, remarkably individual endeavor. Sure, committee members, student friends, understanding non-academics, etc. are essential to the process, but the bottom line is that a lone scholar spends a great portion of each day alone, silent, writing.

In answering Ingrid’s question about who I interviewed this morning, I found myself remembering why I care about the bridge project I study (because it worked!) and why I’m interested in collaboration in the first place (because we change the world when we work together). When we talked about the differences between departments that focus on the ACM and those that focus on the AoM, I remembered why Michigan was the right place for me (I care deeply about what people are able to accomplish when they work together and the technologies that enable them to do so.).

I recommend getting out of your office, finding a couple colleagues you haven’t talked to in a while, and making a break for a nice coffee/tea shop. Maybe you already knew that was a good idea, but I’d forgotten how satisfying such an afternoon can be.

Because I have some loans serviced by Sallie Mae, I can transfer my Upromise account monies to my loans. I’m pretty sure it works like this:

1. Open an Upromise account
2. Link your credit cards to your Upromise account
3. Shop at stores that contribute to Upromise accounts
4. Small percentages of your purchases get put into your Upromise account
5. Transfer your Upromise account money to your Sallie Mae-serviced loan
6. Repeat steps 3-6

See, free and simple. You can also get your friends and family to sign up so that percentages of their purchases go to your Upromise account too. Thanks, family! Mine came out like gangbusters and signed up right away. Let me know if you have no loans and no one else to support via Upromise; I’d love to get a piece of your shopping too. Upromise is good for people planning to go to school too, but I don’t know all the details there.

Oh, I almost forgot. Upromise partners with restaurants and bars too. That’s right. 4% of what you eat out or drink can go to your savings account. Woot! Ann Arbor restaurants and bars include aut bar, Arbor Brewing Company, Leopold Bros., and Scorekeepers. There are more, but that’s a start. Again, woot!

You, dear reader, are lucky. I’m not writing to complain! Instead, I’m writing to catch up. I’ve experienced some personal and professional turmoil in the last few weeks, and my little blogging adventure had to get pushed down the priority stack. But here I am, on vacation, and I thought a little blogging might cheer me up.

You’ll be interested to know that it takes a mere 46 minutes to get from the front door of the Sheraton Four Points in Ann Arbor to the down escalator just past security at Detroit’s McNamara Terminal. I know you just shouted, “Liar!” or something even less nice, but it’s true. I timed it. I took the 3:00pm Michigan Flyer shuttle from the Sheraton, sat in the very last row of the bus, and still made it through security by 3:46pm. Whatever security does (or does not do) at Detroit should be repeated in as many U.S. airports as possible. (Are you listening, Denver?!)

I hopped on the tram and landed here, near the Taco Bell, by the high number gates. I ran into some of the flight attendants who will be manning (or womanning as the case may be) Northwest flight 757 to Minneapolis. They’re chatty and smiley and like their tacos crunchy. Why would I tell you this? Because I’m sure some horrible passenger is going to try to ruin one of their days by being a jerk, and I just wanted you to know that these flight attendants are just like the rest of us.

Oh, that reminds me of my favorite good sportsmanship commercial of the football season. I think it’s by the Big 12. It has people yelling at some guy gardening and some other people doing other jobs, and the narrator says something like, “You don’t do it anywhere else.” That’s right. Referees and flight attendants deserve respect too.

I’m off to compile a “what I learned in the last 2 weeks” post. I’ll send it over from Iowa sometime this week. May your holiday travel be safe and enjoyable whether you’re going across the living room or across the country.

I’m on vacation in Okoboji, Iowa, and I thought I’d packed well. I thought wrong. I forgot to return some DVDs to Blockbuster on my way out of town, and I’m pretty sure I’m now the proud owner of The Long Kiss Goodnight and the not-at-all-proud owner of How to Lose Your Lover. Yes, I could just send them back to the store from here, but that would require effort I’m not sure I have the energy to muster.

I also forgot that my syllabus for “Getting Started: GSIs Teaching Graduate Students,” a Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) orientation I’m teaching in late August, is due next week. Luckily, my very helpful officemate, Jun Zhang, was kind enough to send me all the papers I’ve gathered in preparation for writing that syllabus. UPS delivers to this remote area where DHL and FedEx fear to tread, and my papers arrived today. I guess that means I’ll write a syllabus in the next few days. It seems strange to call a workshop plan a “syllabus,” but that’s what the guy at CRLT called it.

Two more things – Cubs tickets and more DVDs. I forgot to turn on my vacation status thing on Half.com, and someone bought my West Wing DVDs. Thanks, Chris, for getting into my apartment and sending those off for me! My eBay reputation stays unblemished this year; we can almost forget about that phone snafu from a while back Thanks to Nicki, I don’t have to worry about the Cubs tickets I also forgot in my apartment. She got them off via USPS to my cousin’s waiting family. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself had I ruined a 3 year old’s chance to see a Cubs game. Unforgivable!

So what have I learned during the last few days?

1. My friends are wonderful people (well, not learned, but reminded).
2. My need to send and receive postal mail increases as my distance from my apartment increases.
3. I do need more than my laptop to get work done.

I think I’ve sent and received more postal mail in the last 5 days than in the 5 months before that. Well, wait, I was the lucky recipient of a number of fantastic post cards. Maybe I deal with mail more often than I notice. It just seems odd to me that I’ve had to arrange for the delivery of so many items in the last few days. Of course, I haven’t even mentioned Harry Potter. I had the last book sent to my parents’ lake house, and it took until very late Saturday afternoon for the darn thing to arrive. 749 pages is too many. My eyes are tired, but my curiosity is sated.

Now that I’ve managed to blather on about mail for an entire blog post, I invite you to check out my Okoboji vacation pictures. You’ll be jealous!

I just returned from a couple hours out with some friends at the 8 Ball Saloon. The 8 Ball is a truly wonderful place. Ann Arbor doesn’t have many bars that combine dart boards, pool tables, cheap drinks, laid back attitudes, and permanent hand stamps. In fact, I’m not sure we have any other bars that have all those things. Oh, and popcorn! Yum. I stopped after one drink tonight, but you wouldn’t know it if you’d seen me lying in the back of a pickup during a post-midnight McDonald’s run. My friend Jessie and I needed some French fries, and Cory obliged. Here’s the evidence to prove it: