I haven't been writing for the last week or so, because apart from being sick over the long weekend, I have also been taking part in a fitness study. This involved getting up at 6:30 am for a 7 am blood draw, and the effect of getting up early made me go to bed early as well. Also, Kadie and I have been sleeping at each other's apartments, and so that has disrupted my evening writing time as well.
As you may know, I've accepted the offer of a tenure-track faculty position at a university in Arizona. Currently I am in a whirl trying to write grants and do experiments, but these are things with which I have a lot of experience. What scares me more is the idea of teaching. My teaching experience is incredibly limited, and although I have an idea of what I'd like to teach, I am scared that I won't know it well enough to communicate it to the students. The particular course I am expected to teach in 2006 (Called the Fall semester in the USA) is currently taught with a strong emphasis on mathematical theory that I think it not very useful for a lot of the students. It's also very dry and somewhat boring stuff, and is a great way to lose students to other areas of chemistry. I'd like to redesign the course somewhat to show students the interesting, colourful and useful materials that exist in my sub-area of chemistry. I need to talk to the department head to see how much leeway I have to do this.
Writing grant proposals is another thing I am rapidly gaining experience with. Academics seem to have to be the ultimate multitaskers, teaching one hour, performing experiments the next, and then writing grants to find money to continue the great circle. I think the academics that make it to the top are those who don't burn out immediately after tenure, the seven years is equal to perhaps a dozen years of traditional 40 hour a week jobs. It's little wonder that some academics I know don't really care anymore by the time they get close to retirement.