What's happening?

There have been some pretty exciting developments in the last few months, and my poor blogging skills mean you may not have heard about any of them. Get ready for a barrage of updates!

February: I applied to York University's Science & Technology Studies graduate program. It's an interdisciplinary field that looks at science and society through the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies. This program seemed like a better fit for my project on wildlife films and the public perception of animal behaviour.

March: I was accepted (yay!) and began preparing for the transition from U of T to York. We also got an exciting new desk, courtesy of IKEA.

April: Isaac proposed and I sad yes! (I told you this would get exciting!)

May: Loads of travel. I attended the 6th European Spring School in History of Science and Popularization on Visual Representations in Science, which meant a week on the sunny island of Menorca, Spain.

Then I flew home to Montreal, to be swept up by a convoy of HPSers on their way to CSHPS (the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science) in Fredericton. After the conference, Isaac and I drove down to Maine for a few weeks of relaxation.

June-August: Back in Toronto, where I began course prep for my first teaching job ever: History of Evolutionary Biology II. It was a six-week summer course for mostly upper-year biology undergrads. I benefitted from Rebecca Moore's amazing course design, as well as guest lectures from Melissa Charenko, Cory Lewis, Curtis Forbes, and Michelle Hoffman (and one in absentia by Vivien Hamilton). And guess what? I had amazing students. They got into the discussions, they wrote interesting essays, and I think the course did its job of creating young people who think more critically about the history of their discipline. They even seemed to like it! In the non-teaching front, I played some softball with the Fig Newtonians (we made the semi-finals, believe it or not!) and worked on my slow-cooker skills. We also chaperoned the coming together of the clans when our families met for the first time in the Eastern Townships.

September: I started two awesome courses at York, an introduction to STS for PhD students and a course on the history of objectivity. I'm also preparing for the latest round of grant applications for next year. Oh, and we published the fifth issue of Spontaneous Generations, on Science and Public Controversy.

Now it's October and I'm all caught up!