Excuse Me, But What the Hell are You Talking About?

Low progression rates and voluntary student withdrawal are increasingly a concern as participation rates in the tertiary sector rise. Models of departure stress the importance of transition mechanisms in obtaining the commitment which ensures persistence. This article describes an innovative induction programme which was devised by applying student persistence research findings. Sufficient details of the activity’s structure are provided to allow it to be adapted by others. The evaluation reported is based mainly on data collected after the first time the programme was run. The programme has now operated for several years and evaluations and modifications are described. The primary aim of this article is to provide guidance on optimizing the effectiveness of the approach.

Translation:  Students start school but don’t finish.  We educators need to help them figure out what they’re doing so that they will make a commitment and stick with it.  We created an interesting new program to introduce students to our school, based on research about student persistence in school.  We describe the program in this paper.  We’ve run the program for several years now, so we describe the changes we’ve made over time to make the program better.  We hope you find some good ideas for your own school.

Now, what was so unattractive about writing an abstract that actually made sense?  Oh right — if people can read it easily, it must not be very good!

New Year’s Resolutions

So here they are:

Do not waste food, at home or at the faculty center.  I haaaate wasting food.

Invite people over at least once a month.  We need friends.

Be super nice to the Astronomer at all times.  This means, among other things, making his tea for him on mornings when we don’t have to hurry.

Call all the members of my immediate family at least once a month.  In practice, this means calling Brother Pilot rather more often.  I hope they will actually enjoy such phone calls and it won’t become a matter of “Oh geezzz….it’s Aunt Vicki’s third Sunday call…again.”  I will at least make an effort to find out the real time where they are, so I don’t accidentally call after everyone’s gone to bed, as I did for the Christmas call!

Write down something nice in the calendar every day.  I did this one year back in undergrad, and it’s amazing how many nice things do happen.  There was only one day in the whole year that was so bad that I had to write, “Not a single nice thing happened today at all!” Yesterday’s entry was that we walked on the beach, saw tidepools, and a really beautiful sunset.  Very romantic.

Finish a couple of projects around the house that have been waiting around for months, possibly years….

Nothing too un-doable, I feel.  Any good resolutions on your parts, dear readers?

Happy New Year! That was fast.

Just got a rejection email for the paper I submitted just before Christmas.  My head is spinning from the speed of the response!  But, it’s actually very good, because this way we’re not waiting for months to have people put off reading the paper and then say no.  The editor’s comments were polite, detailed, right on target, and I don’t blame her a bit for rejecting the paper.  (In fact, dear co-author, “I told you so.”  Dear readers, I told you so, too!)  We may be able to salvage it for another journal with the excellent input from this editor.

What on earth is she doing sending work emails on New Year’s Day?  Don’t they celebrate the holiday in the UK?

Oh, Happy New Year, everyone.

The Way on the Sea

We’re visiting in San Diego for a few days, and yesterday we went to the Maritime Museum in honor of Sister Sailor.  I wish they had had a Coast Guard vessel to tour.  They had a Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine, the frigate HMS Surprise, the windjammer Star of India, which carried people emigrating from England to New Zealand and is currently the oldest active ship in the world, the ferry Berkeley, the research sub USS Dolphin, and the pleasure yacht Medea.  The museum itself is in the cavernous hold of the Berkeley, and contains all sorts of ship models, charts, equipment, pictures, a library, everything.  Ships are incredibly expensive, complicated technologies!  I confess I didn’t understand almost any of what I saw, so it was more fun to look at the models than try to figure out the charts.  They also had an exhibit of miniature ships, some modern and some made by French prisoners of war — can you imagine, prisoners built teeny little replicas of their ships while they were in prison?

But I felt sad during the visit, because it was stunningly clear that ships are, in general, not built for peace.  Ships are built for war, for exploration and conquest, for consumption.  The ships of Britain’s period of naval supremacy chewed up hundreds and thousands of boys and men and spat them out mangled.  We all know what happened to the Kursk.  Mass whaling activity was alive and well up until about 30 years ago, which is why about 2000 blue whales swim where 360,000 used to wander the Pacific.  Fishing fleets to feed our mouths are rapidly putting themselves out of business.  And don’t even get me started about the Reagan, which was visible across the harbor — a Nimitz class aircraft carrier.

Why is it, why is it, that human being spend so much time and energy trying to kill each other?  Why do our best efforts go into death?  In the name of Christ, no less, in a lot of cases?

The Coast Guard, thankfully, is generally not out to do these things.  Their purposes are mostly peaceful, such as search & rescue, law enforcement, environmental protection, that kind of thing.  So, I salute Sister Sailor and her men, who show us the better way on the sea.

Nothing Like Christmas…

…to make you realize just how many relationships you don’t have any more.

Happy merry, y’all.  Sorry.

A Christmas Duet

Pavarotti & Domingo, singing “Joy to the World”!

The Not Gonna Happen Department

Yeah, I had great plans of getting all my weekly teaching notes written this week, or at least having ideas worked out for all of them.  Not gonna happen.

Instead, I’m cleaning the faculty center.  We serve a LOT of people in here and things just get messy by the end of the term.   Is it just me being beeyotchy or is it reasonable to feel slightly peevish at groups that use our space and then leave the chairs higgledy-piggledy, crumbs and scraps all over the place, whiteboards unerased, food waste in the recycling and recycling in the trash can, scraps of paper and random pens lying about, and use up our (non-sustainable) paper cups rather than bring their own coffee mugs?  Oh, and THIS:  we have a sink in the back, with a BIG YELLOW SIGN over it saying that the faucet is wonky so please turn the water off carefully.  How many times do I walk back there and find a heavy drip to a thin stream?  Come on, peeple, this is dry country.

Actually I really don’t mind too much, I just have a bit of an earache right now that is making me cranky.

I also planned to write up some reports for faculty regarding student evaluations.  We’re testing a couple of new forms and some nice people helped us by doing a pilot test.  I think I can get that done.

But before that I will go and replace the yellow paper that is full of pinholes on the bulletin board. Whee, kindergarten!

One More Paper

Is off to review!  Wow, that’s two in a month.  Cross your fingers for me.

I’m less sanguine about this one than the blog paper.  But, we’ll see…nothing ventured nothing gained…if you don’t submit, you definitely don’t publish.

The Stranger

We went to a Christmas concert yesterday at a local church.  My friend La Maestra is the choral director there and the accompanist, whom I’ll call Mr. Harmony, is an exceptionally talented local composer and pianist.  The choir sang about 12 of his arrangements of existing Christmas carols, plus two of his original carols.

One of the originals, “Look Out the Window,” deserves to become a classic of the caliber of “Away in a Manger.”  Actually, it’s better than Away; what I mean is that these words and melody should be remembered after Mr. Harmony’s name is long gone.

I don’t remember all the words (should’ve asked for a copy) but the sense was this:  A man looks out his window one morning and a stranger beckons to him to “Come and see!” The chorus says something like “My hope was awakened and sorrow was gone.”

The stranger is a powerful figure in folk mythology of all sorts, Christian folklore included. One never knows when the stranger is really an angel, or perhaps if there’s any difference at all. Christ said, often, that the way we treat people we don’t even know is the most significant sign of our faith.  Kindness of strangers and kindness to strangers transforms us into neighbors.

Whatever you think of Christian doctrine, at its best, its very best, this is it: Hope awakens and strangers become friends as they seek the fulfillment of hope.

Progress!

No, not on yesterday’s project.  BUT, in the best tradition of Productive Writers Everywhere, I sat down and wrote something this morning before moving on to other things!  Just thought I would crow a little on the blog about this.  I do need to get out the “Getting Things Done” book and overhaul my project lists.  I’m getting a lot more projects on teh deks right now, and they need a different kind of attention than I’ve given projects before — this time, I have to do budgets and keep people informed in a way that I have not before.

The Astronomer and I were both wondering yesterday how we have wandered so far astray from our original loves, astronomy and agriculture.  He’s pounding the keyboard trying to get a recruiting email out to students, and I’m pounding the keyboard trying to figure out how to fund faculty free time.  What happened?