New Faculty Life: All in the Details

You know how some people prefer Coke to Pepsi? A similar preference exists in the higher education community: The Chronicle of Higher Education versus Inside HigherEd. I've been a Chronicle reader for some time at Stanford - a weekly newsletter highlighted articles on faculty life, academic disputes, grad students, and general whining from the Ivory Tower. However, I have now turned off that newsletter and subscribed to Inside HigherEd. Why? Well, Chronicle is not free and Inside HigherEd is. Stanford had an institutional subscription to the Chronicle, so I didn't have to pay. Agnes Scott doesn't seem to have an institutional subscription, so I'm happy to give the free one a try!

I got to speak with a student today. It was very exciting! She is doing an internship here on campus this summer that involves writing faculty profiles. We were supposed to chat for 20 minutes, but it became (over) 90 minutes. It was great - we discussed quantum physics, philosophy, literature, and my research. See, this is why I'm here at Agnes Scott: the students. This "summer gig" of course planning and reviewing papers is not entirely what I signed up for. It is just the appetizer to actual teaching and interacting with students.

I've sent my first "professor" e-mails - asking my Electronics students about how they would like to procure the textbook. I'm usually overly thoughtful in my e-mails (ie, I overthink the details), but I felt it would be important to get a number of things right this time: my excitement to teach them, sufficient information, and not too long... I had a small crisis when I realized I didn't know how to "sign" the e-mail. Here at Agnes Scott, students tend to refer to their faculty as "Dr Lastname". But, it feels very strange for me to sign an e-mail as "Dr. Ackerman". I'm concerned that if I sign the e-mails "Nicole" that they may think I want them to call me by first name (which I don't). Because it is the culture here, and because I am relatively young, I would prefer the students to call me Dr. Ackerman. See - I overthink the details.

I'm getting better at requesting free textbooks. Visiting a publishers website, I noticed a message about the "free return postage" on books that are no longer needed/wanted. What? Who would not want a book anymore? I understand that they don't want the free instructors' copies floating around and being sold. But, they don't actually expect me to send any of these books back, right?