I Heart Jet Lag

Does anyone else like jet lag? I must admit that I kind of enjoy it, but I have not met m/any others who do. It isn't so great if I arrive at a distant conference and almost immediately find myself sitting in an afternoon session, struggling to keep my eyes from rolling back into my head, but there are some aspects of jet lag that I like. For example, jet lag sleep is strangely deep and satisfying for me.

I can't sleep on planes, and I don't even bother with any particular strategy involving sleep aids, flying at a particular time of day etc. I just take whatever flights work best for reasons of schedule/economy and then roll with the jet lag. I do not struggle against it. I am at peace with it. It might even make me a nicer person (temporarily).

I have been known to cultivate jet lag. When I get home from a trip, I don't mind waking up insanely early for a few days. I am not typically a 'morning person'; in my non-jet lagged existence, I require alarms and severe cat activity to start to wake up, and then I need a few snooze alarm episodes. When I am jet-lagged, I wake before the alarms and even before 2/3 of my cats. This is quite interesting and novel, at least for a few days.

You might think that jet lag would make routine administrative work even more difficult, but in fact it can be quite helpful to have a temporary, jet lag-induced feeling of detachment and distance from some otherwise tedious activities (some meetings, paperwork etc.). It wouldn't be fun all the time, but for a few days, I am happy to recover slowly from the rigors of travel, eventually emerging from jet lag into my usual mode of existence. That's fine, too, I am usually ready for things to go back to what passes for normal around here.

You May Go Now

Some of my colleagues in the US and abroad either have to provide details of their professional travel plans to their university before travel or, in some cases, have to get permission to travel, even when classes are not in session. At some institutions, these policies apply to both domestic and international professional travel, and at others, only to international travel.

Note: I am not talking about cases in which faculty are applying for travel funds from their university. I am talking about travel that is covered by a grant or other external sources of funding.

I know what my university's rules are for allowable travel expenses, airline and fare class selection, frequent flyer miles, use of a business credit card (rental cars and plane tickets: yes! casino chips and massages: no!), and the reimbursement process. Every once in a while I hear a rumor about a notification policy, but so far, it seems that either there isn't such a policy or it is not enforced. 

For a while, faculty in my department were supposed to provide travel plans in advance to a certain administrative assistant; if we didn't, we were told, we might not be covered by health insurance or workers' compensation if a problem arose during travel.

That did not seem quite fair to me. If I traveled to a major city for perfectly legitimate professional reasons and then, while walking to my hotel, I am struck on the head by a piece of plywood that falls off a building under construction (true story), would I be ineligible for coverage if I hadn't told my department I was making the trip? Maybe I don't want to know the answer to that.

Anyway, when that pseudo-policy was in effect, some of us dutifully filed our travel info, some of us didn't, and eventually the AA pleaded with us all to stop sending her this information, so we did (stop).

I can see why a university might want to know quickly and accurately who is where if major disaster strikes in a particular location. I am not sure, however, that knowing what country and city we are in would be that useful for any practical purpose in an emergency. I could be quite wrong about that: Do universities that know the general whereabouts of its employees (I am not including students in this; that is different) during a major natural or other disaster provide any useful help, or is travel info just a record-keeping exercise for general bureaucratic purposes?

I do not know the answer to that question. I have been in/near some disasters during travel, but in those particular cases I did not need assistance from my university to deal with whatever I needed to deal with (for example, alerting family, friends, and colleagues that I was fine).

Do you believe that universities collect travel information out of concern for their employees and students? Some of my more cynical colleagues think there are darker motives for collecting such data.. (and if you can't guess what these are, that's great -- it means you are not (yet) a paranoid cynic).

Some things like this (travel plan reporting) may still be the domain of departments or other sub-units of an institution, so policies and/or enforcement may vary even within a single university. This may change: it seems that there is a move to centralize some functions that were formerly dealt with in departments; none of this has increased efficiency, as far as I can tell.

I hope the day never comes when such a policy either comes into existence or is enforced in my little corner of academia, dramatically decreasing our freedom to hop on a plane and travel incognito to Tuvalu on a whim, while adding to the amount of paperwork that we all have to do and that may well not have any real purpose.

Remotely There

How much has Skype/teleconferencing etc. reduced the need for professional academic travel? For me, not at all. These things have reduced the number of traditional phone calls to a very low number, but there has been no decrease in conference travel or travel to other universities to give talks, just to mention two common reasons for professional travel.

For some committees involving geographically dispersed people, we can do some or all of our committee business by email instead of meeting in person, but when we used to meet in person, it was before or during a conference. We still go to the conference, we just don't do committee meetings there.

Technology has not affected my need to travel a lot, but it has increased the level and style of participation of geographically remote colleagues in some of my research group's activities. At some research group meetings, we have had the face and voice of a colleague (typically an international colleague) transmitted via a laptop sitting on a table. It is great fun to rotate the laptop around so that the colleague's head can be facing the person who is speaking.

I can't imagine anything reducing the need to be at a conference in person or to travel to another university to give a talk and meet people. I can, however, imagine having less money for these things, thus reducing the opportunities for travel, but the benefits of in-person interactions in different professional settings is much greater than what can be accomplished via technological methods for transmitting voices and images.

On Not Being There

It can be difficult to balance a typical research university professor teaching load with a typical research university professor research activity level, not just in terms of the time required to do both when physically in one's own department but also (and perhaps especially) when some travel is required. I have already been on two major trips this academic year, and have two more scheduled before the term ends. How is this possible for someone who also teaches?

This is a question asked by one of my non-academic friends on Facebook. She was surprised to read that I was on the road yet again last week and wondered how I could do that and teach.

Answers:

- Very careful scheduling of travel dates, if possible, to minimize classes missed.

- Very careful scheduling so that exams coincide with some missed classes (but only if this doesn't involve strange twisting of the schedule to place exams in times that make no sense with the course schedule).

- Team-teaching (very important for me).

- Selective use of substitutes, possibilities for which include colleagues with whom one trades teaching, postdocs or grad students who want to get some experience teaching a class or two, and postdocs or grad students who are paid to do substitute teaching.

The postdoc/grad substitute option must be done carefully and selectively and not be an oppressive or unfair burden on them or lead to an unpleasant experience for the undergrads in a class because of the challenges of parachuting into someone else's class to teach. Example: Last year a senior grad student wanted to teach a class or two for me; he thought it would help his application for academic jobs to have this experience. I organized the course schedule so that he taught for me while I was at a meeting, he did a terrible job, the students hated him, I had to redo the important parts of the lectures, and I don't think my substitute enjoyed the experience much either. Other substitutes have been great, but it can a bit hard to predict who will do well and who won't.

I have to travel for essential research purposes (it is part of my job) and I have to teach (it is part of my job) and the collision of these two priorities in time and space leads to some complex logistics. I try to work something out that allows both to happen in the best way possible for everyone, but sometimes I succeed in this and sometimes I don't.

Mere Woman

This week I have been in a country that uses the language I have been studying for the past few years – for 3 years in undergraduate language courses and this year with a tutor. I am mostly pleased with the progress I’ve made learning the language, though I wish I had more skills, particularly with speaking.

I have found that knowing the language has opened doors (in part owing to surprise that I know some of the language), turned unfriendly people friendly, and of course helped with logistics of travel.

One thing that no amount of language knowledge will overcome is the discomfort that some of the men here have with interacting with me. At times, daily life here is easier if I am quiet and don’t try to spend money directly. I suppose it is a sign of my cultural incomprehension that I cannot really understand why some men here cannot converse with me directly or let me pay for something instead of first handing the money to another man.

The other day during a business transaction with a male employee of a major international corporation in a major city, at each step of the transaction this man handed the relevant item (my passport, my receipt) to my male colleague (also a foreigner in this country), who then handed the items to me. I know enough about the culture to know that his avoidance of direct contact with me was not a sign of respect, but in fact the opposite. This is a situation in which my language skills (such as they are) cannot make up for the fact that I am a mere woman.

Nevertheless, I like being here and working with international colleagues. The research is fascinating and I am willing to endure some unpleasant things to have these experiences.

Road Scholar

Here is what I learned from my Travel Poll earlier this week:

1. Many more early career faculty voted in the poll than did more senior faculty. Only 16 so-called full Professors voted, and I know who some of them are. Might one conclude from these data that more early faculty read this blog (or blogs in general) than do more senior faculty? I find that kind of interesting; perhaps not surprising, but interesting nevertheless.

2. In every professorial rank polled, most faculty travel <> 75k/year is very very low.

4. There is no significant difference between Assistant and Associate Professors in terms of miles traveled. There is no particular trend of travel increasing or decreasing with career stage, although not enough Professors voted to make a conclusion about them. Variation in travel likely relates more to research field, institution type, funding opportunities, the number and location of essential conferences etc. than it does to career stage.

5. When making decisions about travel, most readers do not and would not take into account the amount of CO2 emissions for which they would be personally responsible, but a significant number would consider doing this, even though they have not yet done so.

I consider the opportunities for interesting travel to be one of the excellent aspects of my professor job, but faculty positions are so varied in so many ways that it seems that one can probably arrange one's professional life to include more or less travel depending on personal circumstances and preferences.

A few years ago, a frequent flyer businessman, upon learning that I had the same frequent flyer status that he had, asked me "Are you really a Road Warrior too?"

No, I am not a Road Warrior. I do not spend my life shuttling around in airplanes. I make a few international trips each year, and a fair number of domestic trips, and the miles add up. Road scholar, perhaps.. warrior, no thanks.

Carbon Feet

Some of you guessed that yesterday's post was leading up to a discussion of Professorial Carbon Footprints. And some of you may have guessed that my Professorial Carbon Footprint (PCF) is quite large owing to the number of miles I fly in airplanes each year.

In my personal life, I have quite a small carbon footprint. My family has made choices involving where we live relative to work/school, how we travel to/from work, how often we drive the one aged, small, and awesomely fuel efficient vehicle that we all share, how and how much we heat/cool our house, and so on. We are a very environment-friendly little family with a very small carbon footprint.

Not so in my professional life. In my professional life, environmental concerns might affect how I organize some of my travel -- e.g. scheduling travel to two not-so-far-apart places in a single trip rather than jetting back and forth to each place. I do not, however, make decisions about whether to travel based on airplane carbon emission issues.

For example, I can't imagine saying, when invited to visit another university or attend a conference and give a talk, "Sorry, I can't come because I don't want to increase my carbon footprint." It's not that my talks are so awesome and I can't live without giving yet another talk, but an important part of my professor job is to interact with other people, talk to and listen to students and colleagues, do the FSP role model thing (in person), establish and maintain international connections, communicate the results of my research etc. Some of my research involves international collaboration that cannot be accomplished via email or Skype, and maintaining these collaborations involves international travel to visit colleagues and attend conferences other than those in the US.

If I weren't sure if I wanted/needed to go to a conference in a far-flung location, I might make a decision about whether to go based in part on environmental impact issues, but my main decision factors are the value of the experience, whether I have time, and the impact on my family.

Last year, a colleague criticized me for traveling so much and therefore having a large carbon footprint, so I asked him what kind of car he drives. He drives an SUV and he drives it more in a month than I drive my 2-door hatchback in a year. My little car wouldn't do well in a collision with his SUV, but it does very well in a carbon footprint contest.

That may not be sufficient justification for my predilection for high PCF travel, but the only way I could reduce my PCF in any significant way would be to restrict my research activities to the US, despite the intellectual and other (broader impact..) benefits of international collaboration. Would it nevertheless be worth it so as to be carbon neutral (or better) in my professional life as well as my personal life? At the moment my answer is no, but perhaps when Antarctica melts even more, none of will be able to make such a choice.

How Many Roads?

Most of my professorial colleagues travel a lot during the academic year and during the summer, as do I. In 2007, I discussed the issue of academic year professional travel in terms of how to deal with missing a class (for example: trade teaching with a colleague? cancel class? show a movie? ask a grad student/postdoc to substitute for you?). Now I am curious about how much we travel. That is, I am feeling very quantitative.

I am feeling quantitative because I have before me the number of miles I flew last year on one particular airline: 69,287 (= 111,044 km). In a random poll of two colleagues in my department, their numbers are similar: one flew 57k miles and the other 62k (down from > 75k the previous two years). Of course, not all professional travel is by airplane, though here in the US it tends to be.

Overall, I think I travel more now than I did at earlier stages of my career, with a few prominent exceptions when I was a Distinguished Lecturer or something like that. I think the increase in travel is mostly related to professional factors and not so much to personal factors (e.g., the age of my daughter), although the duration of some of my professional trips has increased now that my daughter is older.

Below are some polls, organized by professorial rank and not controlled for the size of the country or continent that one inhabits.

If you are a professor, how much did you travel LAST YEAR (calendar year 2008), and has this number changed (up, down, not) as you have progressed through the academic ranks? For assistant professors, 'previous academic rank' refers to the graduate student and/or postdoctoral stages of one's career.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR/PROFESSIONAL TRAVEL
	0-24,999 miles (0-40,232 km)
	25,000-49,999 miles (40,234-80,466 km)
	50,000-74,999 miles (80,467-120,699 km)
	>75,000 miles (>120,701 km)
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Compared to your previous academic rank, this is
	more travel
	less travel
	the same amount of travel
Free polls from Pollhost.com

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR/PROFESSIONAL TRAVEL
	0-24,999 miles (0-40,232 km)
	25,000-49,999 miles (40,234-80,466 km)
	50,000-74,999 miles (80,467-120,699 km)
	>75,000 miles (>120,701 km)
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Compared to your previous academic rank, this is
	more travel
	less travel
	the same amount of travel
Free polls from Pollhost.com

PROFESSOR/PROFESSIONAL TRAVEL
	0-24,999 miles (0-40,232 km)
	25,000-49,999 miles (40,234-80,466 km)
	50,000-74,999 miles (80,467-120,699 km)
	>75,000 miles (>120,701 km)
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Compared to your previous academic rank, this is
	more travel
	less travel
	the same amount of travel
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Greasing the Skids

When I arrived at my small but fashionable International Hotel yesterday, I was dropped off by two of the European Professors who were at my workshop. We stood in the lobby chatting for bit before parting ways. The three of us were perhaps a notch or three below the typical level of stylishness of most people who stay at this hotel, and I got a rather frosty reception from the front desk clerk. I was beyond caring about details like that, and was just glad to be in a quiet, relaxing place.

Today the same front desk clerk continued to be politely disapproving when I had a brief conversation with him, but again, it's not exactly going to punch a hole in my day if I don't get a cheery good morning from everyone I meet.

I had to deal with some administrative issues before leaving the country, and this turned out to be somewhat complex. I approached the issues in my usual Scientific way: I collected data on my options, used the internet and made a phone call or two, took notes, and was mulling what to do. Just then, miraculously, a college friend of mine who works at the American embassy here called the hotel looking for me.

I asked her some questions and she said she'd call back in a little while. She did, calling via the front desk of the hotel. She mentioned the embassy, dropped a few names, sort of implied that I might be a relative of the American ambassador (a contention that for various bizarre reasons was plausible), and voila: all my problems were solved.

In addition, the front desk clerk became my best friend. Now he beams at me when he sees me and asks after my health. I think I liked him better when he was terse and glaring.

I had lunch with my diplomatic friend and, in addition to getting caught up on the usual stuff (mutual friends, kids etc.), I asked her about her job. Not surprisingly, a lot of it is 'political'. Academics involves politics of a sort as well, but most of us academics aren't very good at this aspect of our jobs. I am in awe of my friend who gracefully navigates through a political universe. I want to name a scientific object or process after her.

Hooray for college friends. In the years since graduating from college, 98.57% of the friends I have made are academics, and 99% of these friends are Physical Science Professors. With all due respect and affection to my professor friends, I am glad that I also know some interesting people -- my college friends -- who have interesting non-academic lives (and not just because one of them helped me to untangle administrative complexities in a foreign country and to become the recipient of insincere affection from a hotel desk clerk).

Disconnected

When I asked the organizer of the workshop I have been attending in a somewhat remote non-US location about internet access, he said that when he is not in his office, he never checks his e-mail or connects to the internet, so that is how he has organized this workshop.

Well, OK, I survived being disconnected for a few days, though at times I felt a bit faint and short of breath. I can see the benefits for a small workshop of staying focused and not having people checking their e-mail constantly, but I think there should have been some provision for occasional internet access, especially since phone access, although at least possible, is not easy for various reasons.

Just because the workshop organizer revels in being internetless when away from the office, does not mean he should have imposed this philosophy so completely on the rest of us. Even once/day access would have been fine.

Having internet access isn’t just about checking on things at the office. When I travel, the internet is how I stay in touch with my family and friends. While at the workshop, I could be easily contacted in an emergency, but there are non-emergency but still important reasons to connect to the rest of the world.

The day I arrived at the workshop, my husband’s beloved aunt died. I want to know how he’s doing. I want to check my daughter’s camp website and see if there are pictures of her having fun in a canoe or around a campfire. I want to check on my cat, who, just before I left, fell (or was pushed..) from a very great height in a tree. Yes, he landed on his feet, one of which then spectacularly broke. [They never mention the broken bone part of the cats-landing-on-their-feet thing, nor how much it costs to get cat femurs surgically fixed]. And so on.

I said to Professor I-never-check-email-away-from-the-office: “But don’t you then return to hundreds of e-mails that you have to sort through? Isn’t that very time-consuming and annoying?”. He admitted that this was indeed the case, but still thought it was worth it to have some internet-free days. That’s fine of course, but that’s not my preference. I’d rather stay connected to family and friends, delete the stupid e-mails and department memos day-by-day, and not return to a scary e-mail inbox.

I am still at the workshop, but I have finally managed to find a wireless signal that I can access once (maybe twice) day.

Travel Fiends

On September 2, 2007, I wrote: Next summer I will organize things differently so that my travel is more spaced out, and I might say no to some invitations to participate in workshops and conferences..

Last summer I traveled much too much, and at the end of the summer I didn't feel rested and ready for the new term, and I didn't accomplish as much as I'd wanted to over the summer. In fact, as I was returning home from my most recent major, long-distance trip a few weeks ago, I felt very tired of traveling and being away from home and my family (and, yes, my office), and was happy at the thought of not going anywhere for too long or too far for a few months. I love traveling, but even I have my limits. Or, at least, I thought I had limits.

The day after I got back from that trip, I was invited to travel far far away for a very intriguing workshop later this month, and I instantly said yes. My daughter will be away at camp at that time, and the opportunity was too interesting to pass up. I think if I had got the invitation on the very day I was doing a lot of traveling, I might have said no, but I guess it only takes me 24 hours (or less) to forget about the annoying and exhausting aspects of traveling and to be willing to do it all again.

I am not the only one with travel amnesia. My husband is the same way. He was going to turn down some invitations to speak at conferences in a couple of months because he is tired of conferences and tired of so much traveling. Furthermore, some of these conferences, although juxtaposed in time, are on opposite sides of the world from each other, and he'd also agreed to serve on a panel that met at about the same time in yet another place. Somehow, however, he ended up searching online for absolutely insane travel itineraries to get him from one side of the world to the other so he can attend most of both conferences. He just told me he got his tickets.

Overall, I am traveling less this summer than I did last summer, so I hope to emerge from the summer feeling recharged for the fall term despite my upcoming wanderings, which may result in sporadic posting and comment moderating.

U is for Unlikely

Subtitle: Flying While Female

Owing to my frequent travels, I have attained a lofty (but not stratospheric) position within my preferred airline's frequent flyer program, and am often upgraded on domestic flights and very occasionally on international flights. My fellow business/first class passengers are of course typically Business People.

On a recent flight, as I took my seat in row 1 of an airplane, the man sitting next to me said "Welcome to business class. Were you upgraded?". He informed me that he was not there because of an upgrade -- he always flew business class -- so it wasn't a "Let's bond over our upgrades" kind of conversation. Apparently, he likes to pick out the upgraded people, and I was an easy call. My seat-mate then promptly fell asleep and snored loudly for the rest of the flight, somewhat diminishing my business class experience.

In fact, this was not the first time a Business Man on an airplane has asked me if I had been upgraded. Maybe it's the giant U that airlines stamp on my forehead that gives my upgraded status away.

Actually, I will be the first to admit that I do not look like a Business Person. My casual attire, lack of professional-looking briefcase or suitcase (I prefer the more academic-type briefcase made of soft material, or even a backpack), and inability/unwillingness to attain a state of business-level personal grooming all mark me out as a likely Upgrade when I sit in business class.

Upgraded academics, particularly FSP's like me, must seem strange to Business People. We clearly must fly often, yet many of us don't have the appearance or accoutrements of >90% of the others sitting in business class. Given the possible explanations of (1) eccentric heiress, (2) disheveled but successful artiste, or (3) random upgraded person, answer #3 is typically seen as more likely.

Even so, Were you upgraded? is a strange question to ask someone. It's almost like asking me what my income is, a question considered rude by most Americans, even among friends. So, why are people willing to ask me this question? I cannot help but note that a statistically invalid, anecdotal survey of two male colleagues who do not look like businessmen and who are frequently upgraded on flights reveals that they have never been asked this question.

FSP's Guide to Academic Etiquette does not extend to the business world, but if it did, it would suggest that people not ask this question of strangers on planes. I am not offended by the question itself -- I don't really care whether anyone knows whether I was upgraded or paying full fare -- but it is rather uncool to ask the question anyway. Furthermore, selectively asking it of women is sexist. Therefore, not asking this question is yet one more little way to make the world a nicer place.

Out of the (Language) Lab

For the past two years, I have been taking classes in a language that is very useful for me to know for my research and international collaborations. In four semesters of taking this class 5 days/week, I have done a lot of homework, taken a lot of quizzes, and done a lot of reading, listening, and speaking. Then I went to a country in which this language is spoken. In fact, I am there right now.

I was nervous about going to this country for the first time since I took the language classes. What if I had made no more progress than I had been able to make previously on my own using books and CD's? What if my two years of language classes had made me an expert at doing homework assignments in a textbook but had left me unprepared to comprehend and communicate in this language in the real world? I have long been able to communicate at a basic level in this language, but this basic level has been deeply unsatisfying, hence my decision to take formal classes.

As soon as I got off the plane, I could tell the difference in my comprehension level, and this has been confirmed as I have spent more time here. My comprehension level is not 100%, but it might be somewhere near 80%, and that's a huge difference from the last time I was here.

My speaking abilities are not as good, but I knew that. Spending time here has helped a bit, and I am optimistic about improving with more time here (and more classes next year).

I have been having fun surprising people who don't expect me to speak the language, and have tried to convince a few people (strangers who started talking to me because it is obvious that I am a foreigner) that I am from a mid-sized provincial town in this country. I picked a town that city people have heard of but that is a place that someone who looks and dresses like me would be unlikely to be from. The response is always entertaining, then I laugh and explain, and then they laugh.

There are some rather conservative parts of this country, and in these places, the culture clash is more startling and less entertaining. In these places, men will shake the hands of my male colleagues but will not even look at me or speak to me, much less shake my hand. [Don't even bother with the 'You're probably imagining it' comments. I have been spending substantial amounts of time in this country nearly every year for the last 15 years and I have a significant dataset of unequivocal experiences, ranging from trivial to serious]. My language skills are of less use in those places, though it is still helpful to be able to understand what people are saying.

So, in answer to the question (which I asked myself) of whether two years of language study at a university can be useful, in my case the answer is definitely yes. I am sure I would learn more/faster if I were immersed in this language more, but it's hard enough making time to take the class. Based on my experiences on this trip, I am very happy with what I have learned in my classes and how useful the course experiences have been. In fact, I am about to send an email to my language instructor telling her exactly that.

Note: I am not sure of my internet access after today, so I will likely off the air for the rest of the week, returning some time next week. This is post #500, so maybe it's time to take a short break anyway.

Driven Students

The title of this post is more literal than it might first appear because driven refers to driving a vehicle. This summer, some of my students are being driven by me.

For reasons that relate to complex logistics, lack of reasonable alternatives, and a temporary lack of sanity, I will be driving with my students (and a postdoc) as we visit some universities and other research sites in another country. Given our itinerary, time constraints, and number of people involved, it makes sense for me to rent a fuel-efficient diesel car and drive it to the places we need to go, even though some of the driving distances are semi-substantial.

It would be nice to share the driving, as I have in the past when traveling by car with students, but I have encountered a few stark issues:

- One student does not drive at all and has never had a driver's license.
- Another student does not know how to drive a manual transmission car, the type of car that we are renting.
- The postdoc seldom drives but theoretically could drive, although the country in which we will be driving has opposite traffic rules from what he is used to.

At first I was not happy about having to do so much of the driving (and no, public transportation is not an option). But then I thought: Would I really want to be a passenger in a car driven by one of the others? In the olden days, I didn't give it much thought, but as the age difference between my students and me widens, they seem so young to me. Some of them have been driving for < 10 years, whereas I have been driving for millions of years. Some of them have never driven in a foreign country or in an unfamiliar city. It might not be safe for anyone if they drove, even if they could drive the rental car.

So, I will do lots of driving -- like a soccer mom driving my kids to practice and matches? I don't know if that analogy is accurate, but I do know that when I am driving, I am going to control the radio/CD player in the car. If I choose the right music -- how about a trip down memory lane of the music I listened to in college and grad school? -- maybe that will inspire the others to acquire some driving skills and/or to become professors so they can drive their own students and/or to work only in places where public transportation can be used on research trips.

$ Matters

The typical procedure when invited to give a talk at another university is for the invitee to get the plane ticket and then get reimbursed after the travel is completed. Lodging, meals, and other transportation costs are taken care of directly by the host institution.

I was recently thinking about all the professional travel expenses my husband and I currently have that have not yet been reimbursed. Including past travel that has yet to be reimbursed and future travel that won't be reimbursed until various times over the next 5-6 months, the sum is quite large at the moment: in the range of $7000. It is so large in part because the system has broken down a bit in terms of timely reimbursements for past travel relative to payments for future travel. In addition, because my teaching schedule is lighter in the spring term than in the fall, I scheduled most of my invited talks for next term. I just got a flock of plane tickets and loaded up my credit card.

For one talk I gave months ago but for which I have yet to be reimbursed, my hosts have been very apologetic but say that their departmental accountant has been deliberately losing receipts and taking a long time with all reimbursements. I have sent my receipt and social security number to the accountant 3 times so far. Methinks my department isn't the only one with a hostile zombie staff member. My hosts say that I am welcome to call their accountant and yell and/or whine, but that option doesn't appeal to me very much (yet).

The delay is annoying but not a huge problem for me. It occurred to me, though, that hostile zombie accountants could cause major problems for financially vulnerable people, such as some candidates for faculty positions (e.g., recent/current Ph.D. students interviewing at several/many places).

As long as there is a constant stream of reimbursements to offset the constant acquisition of new plane tickets, the system works pretty well. For me right now, the system is out of whack, with a drought at one end and a flood at the other. If things got dire, I would ask a host department to get my plane ticket for me, avoiding the reimbursement issue entirely. In the meantime, I will just try to enjoy the glorious adventure that is air travel in the U.S. these days, and not worry so much about $ matters.

Professor Magnet Hotel

Later this fall I will be traveling to a large city to which I’ve traveled a number of times in the past ~ 20 years. A long time ago, I found a hotel that I really like, so I typically stay there. I have never bothered to read reviews of this hotel before, perhaps because I started staying there in the pre-online review era and already know that I like this hotel. Out of curiosity, I looked it up online recently and found to my surprise that this hotel is “favored by academics”.

I find it disconcerting that being a professor so pervades every molecule of my being that I am subconsciously attracted to a particular kind of hotel. When I’ve stayed at this hotel before, I have not noticed that it is swarming with professorial people. Next time, I will look around and see if there are people in shirts that look like graph paper or people dressed all in black editing manuscripts in the breakfast room.

I’m not sure what specifically makes this hotel a professor magnet. The hotel is architecturally interesting (= charming), smallish (= cozy), and conveniently located in the city center. So..?

Excusable Absences

For those of us who teach and do research at a research university, one challenge of simultaneously teaching and doing research is how to deal with the travel that is necessary for the research but that conflicts with the responsibilities of teaching.

Even though summer has just started, I am already making decisions about travels for the next academic year, and trying to decide how to balance teaching responsibilities with research-related travel. There are some conferences I have to attend (2), some I would like to attend (2 others), and some invitations to give talks at other universities. There is other travel I would like to do (e.g., visit colleagues and other labs). However, even if I wanted to be away that much, I am teaching 2 classes in the fall and taking a class as a student. So, I am trying to restrict my travel to the minimum: the 2 essential conferences. My grad students will represent our group just fine at any conferences I can't attend, and I will try to schedule all invited talks for the spring semester, when I am team-teaching and have a more open schedule.

And, yes, some conferences are essential for presenting results and for networking. A colleague of mine recently filed his annual NSF report and didn't report any conference presentations,and there were no papers or theses yet to report; the program director rejected his report. My colleague did in fact have conference presentations to report, but he didn't think these were important to mention. He added the abstract citations, and the report was accepted.

Even with my plans for limited travel in the fall, I will miss 3 classes for one course, and 2 for another. There are various ways to deal with these absences, including:

- scheduling an exam for a day I will be away, if the timing makes sense for an exam then. In the pre-email era, I never scheduled exams for times I would be away, unless I was around up until very close to the time of the exam. Now that students are most likely to email me with questions, I can help them remotely just as well as if I'm in my office. If I'm going to be away for 2 classes in a week, I schedule the exam for the first absence, and cancel the second one. It's more difficult if the class meets less and/or doesn't have exams, but in these cases I provide an extended, structured activity that can be accomplished with small working groups and email input from me.

- arranging for a substitute: a grad student, postdoc, or colleague. This can work well as long as not overdone, and can be a good experience for a grad student or postdoc (as well as providing additional good material for letters of reference). This fall, I have an informal agreement to trade substitute activities with a colleague who will also be traveling a lot. I've taught his course before and he's taught mine, so it's an easy trade.

I have never left a movie to be shown to a class while I'm away, but I suppose this would be OK as long as the movie was well justified in the context of the class.

It would be best for my teaching if I didn't miss any classes, but that's not possible.

Traveling Woman

In the next 5-6 months, I will be making several professional trips to Europe, and I have been working on my travel arrangements this week. I have found it very helpful in recent years to consult online reviews of hotels. I like to stay in small to medium sized hotels that seem like they might have some elements of charm or character. What is most important to me, though, is how a hotel treats its women guests. That's where the reviews are helpful.

I pay no attention to reviews from people who complain that a hotel is 'old' or that the rooms are small or that the TV was microscopic. Information about traffic or other noise and renovation/construction can be useful, but mostly I care about being safe and being treated with respect.

One hotel I was seriously considering I am now not considering because a review from a solo woman guest noted that she was ignored by the staff at breakfast, even once she told them that she wasn't waiting for anyone, and she had trouble getting the attention of people at the front desk. I can deal with a certain amount of rudeness, especially if it is equal-opportunity rudeness, but I'd rather stay at a place where women travelers are as welcome as men travelers.

After (and sometimes during) my trips, I contribute reviews of the places I stay, including positive reviews of hotels that treated me well. I think this is important data for solo women travelers, and much more interesting than whether the pillows are too thin.

Follow The Leader

This week, I was going through security in an airport, and was too short to reach over and get a gray bin from the stack behind the counter where we were all removing our laptops, shoes, and clear ziploc bags with < 3 oz. containers of liquids and gels. A tall man behind me reached over and shoved the stack closer, where we could all reach them easily, and I thanked him. He ignored me, but smirked at his friend next to him and said "Lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way.", which I believe is a slight reinterpretation of a quotation by Thomas Paine, and perhaps more recently a self-help book title. Somehow, I don't think this inspirational leadership mantra was intended as a means for tall men to insult short women.

On the plane, I sat next to a very polite and pleasant man who, when he saw me working on some papers, asked me what I do. I told him that I am a science professor (specifying my field of science). His first guess was that I teach at a community college. Nope. His next guess was that I teach at a local small college. Nope. His next guess was that I teach at a small church-affiliated university in the region. Nope. Finally I said that I am a professor at the Big University of X. He was surprised because he has a neighbor who was a professor there, and this neighbor was a very distinguished man who wrote a famous book. And his point was.. what?

The amazing thing is that I know his distinguished neighbor (long-retired), and I teach a class that he used to teach. By any measure (# of papers, grants, books, citation indices, honors etc.), I am more successful than the distinguishd professor ever was in his long career, but I will never be distinguished. I will never look it and I will never act it.

I once went on a lecture tour as a Distinguished Lecturer for a professional society. At one airport, I waited and waited for someone to meet me, and after a long wait, I was paged. It turns out that the student sent to pick me up had been waiting in the same place I was, and had seen me, but it hadn't occurred to him that I could be the distinguished professor he was supposed to meet.