Saturday, February 28, 2009

Tap, tap, this thing on?

I've been busy this last week, working on a presentation for work. They do a weekly seminar series and I signed up way back in September to do the seminar for this week. My topic was all set, the research was finished and written up, it was more a matter of getting back in the groove of giving a presentation.

I was able to head home to practice, and gave my presentation to Sally numerous times. At the beginning, I'd have to stop and change something, or move a slide around in the PowerPoint presentation. But after a while, it clicked and I was ready.

I showed up early, worked with the IT guy to make sure the clicker worked and that the people who vidoeconference with us in Puerto Rico could hear us. Then, of course, the clicker didn't work for the presentation itself, and the settings for Puerto Rico's feed had to be fiddled with. But all that was OK. It was a friendly audience. The talk went smoothly and people asked questions for about 10 minutes.

Afterwards, I had a couple of people ask me if I had been, or had aspirations to be, a professor. This struck a cord with me because it hits me in the "are you doing what you're supposed to be doing?" department. I HAVE always wanted to be a college professor. I DO like to teach.

So why have I not pursued this? I am daunted by the amount of work that is required. The process of obtaining grants to support research is grueling, and so very competitive. I think I would feel like I wasn't devoting enough time to raising my son. I'd have to move, and things are already complicated enough being in a long distance relationship, and having Mr W's dad to account for.

I don't know. If I want to get back into it, I'd have to take on some kind of part time or volunteer work to show that I'm still thinking about it. I have a good job until June of 2010. I wish I had a crystal ball. Part of me just wants to know if I have the chutzpah to pull it off.

I think this comes from coming off of the first anniversary of my sister's death. I feel like I've rolled out from under something big and it's time to get back to looking toward the future instead of the past.

3 comments:

  1. You don't have to teach at a 4 year university and try to support research with grants etc. where teaching gets shoved to the back burner all the time, You can teach at a Community/Technical college, like John and I do (well I used to). If you like the student contact part more than the research, check out that route! I found it to be very rewarding...

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  2. Yeah, I know that community college is a good gig, and it sure seems to suit JB well. The pay is the biggest deterrent there, though. Maybe having a PhD would bring it up to around $40K to start???

    The teaching gig is in my future though, in some form. Who knows, maybe it'll be volunteer, but I do get something out of it.

    Thanks for commenting!!

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  3. You would definitely make more than that in MN I believe. John would know better though...

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Hi, sorry to make the humans do an extra step.