Productive (adj)

Preamble: the title of this post officially "gives it away": I'm ABD with a B-A-B-Y. Most everyone I interact with professionally knows this, and I wasn't keeping it secret from the internet , but there's still a disadvantage to being a  mother in academia , and many hesitate to talk about being parents publicly. I think that's unreasonable, and I hope that this and similar posts can be helpful to other academic parents facing similar issues. Last week my family attended HSS / PSA in windy Chicago, and it was a great example of a conference that took families with babies into consideration. My next post will be about the good choices those conference organizers made, but this one is directed towards the parent(s) conferencing with a baby in tow (note: some of these tips may not apply to multiple/older children or other types of dependent care, areas in which I'm not experienced). 1. Be baby-travel savvy.   There are plenty of usefu...

This summer there are many balls in the air. I'm ostensibly on vacation in Maine, but there are some significant responsibilities to take care of before heading back to Canada in August. In decreasing order of importance, these are: 1) Wedding planning. People warn you about how many details need to be looked after, but I severely underestimated the amount of work it would be. And doing many things ourselves (especially of the craftier variety) reduces cost but increases time and effort. Even though we're holding a low-key, casual affair, the to-do list goes on and on. Fortunately, this kind of project is agreeable to work on, and Isaac and his family have been doing a tremendous amount. 2) Reading for comps. My exam has been scheduled for the beginning of December, and there are so many books to read! 150 in all, in 3 lists. I have a handful under my belt so far, but it never really feels as though I'm going fast enough. My problem might be that I'm a fast, retenti...

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...

Happy New Year! Holiday baking update: the anti-procrastination baking worked really well. Having baked all kinds of things before the holidays, I was both able to give all kinds of decorated cookies to loved ones and I was better prepared to bake "on the fly" during the holidays when the cookies had long run out (unexpected benefit). It turns out that loads of techniques that you use in one kind of recipe transfer to improvisational baking, where you try to make the best of the ingredients you have on hand. My best "on the fly" baking experience was a Victoria spongecake in someone else's kitchen; the centre didn't quite bake for long enough and therefore collapsed a little when the cake was cooling but apart from that it was a success. I took almost 3 weeks away from Toronto for the break, and it was exactly what I needed after a December of frenzied writing. That's not to say that there wasn't a lot to do - paperwork, emails, planning and so on. A...