Hello, friends. I hope you are all doing well and staying safe. I'm slightly past one month since my last post, but I guess it's better than six months, right? Life has continued to be busy, but things are finally going to start slowing down. Yesterday I worked really hard to finish my community health class. I wrote a seven page paper, which I finished this morning, a six-hundred word exam essay, and two 300+ word journals. Now that I have that behind me, I am going to take a break from school until after the first of the year. I'll write more about this later.
To follow up on my last post, the camper is sold. We got a decent deal on it, but we still took a loss. I am just happy that we do not have to worry about it any longer. It was a real dark cloud over Dan's head. He is much happier now. After we were sure everything was going to go through, we stopped by the Jeep dealership and ordered our Wrangler. It is a four door in snazzberry pearl color. We should hear something in about four weeks. Even though we took a hit on the camper, we will come out ahead on the truck and even sell it for more than we paid for it. The truck is a 2018 and only has a little over 4,000 miles on it. It's really huge. It's a Ram 3500 duelly. Dan has a hard time finding parking places for it, so we usually take my little Fiesta when we go places together. I have never driven the truck. It is just too big for my liking. I won't miss it much, even though it is a really nice vehicle.
The biggest relief about having the camper sold is that we don't have to worry about it taking damage from Hurricane Ida. Even though we are only taking a glancing blow from the storm, there was always a concern that something would fall on it or that wind would blow it over. We are supposed to stay below tropical storm force winds, but there is a tornado threat and we are under a tornado watch until 7:00 tonight. I really feel sorry for those in Louisiana. Sally hit us last year as a strong category 2 storm, and we had no power for several days. This storm will devastate the coastal communities for months. If you think of them, please say a prayer for their safety. Currently, the storm is a category 4. To put that in perspective, Katrina hit as a category 3. Dan and I went out and bought a generator a couple of days ago. I don't think we will need it for this storm, but eventually we will. Dan is going to have the electric company wire our meter so we can plug the generator right into it. That way, we won't have extension cords running all over the house. Last year during Sally we used our small camping generator. It worked fine, but there were some things it couldn't do, so having one that is more powerful gives me peace of mind.
I have some exciting news to share about the DBA chair stuff I mentioned last time I wrote. I hunkered down and finished my IRB courses a couple of weeks ago, and then I emailed the program director to let her know and ask her what my next step in the process was. Well, she went and talked to the director of my department, and together they agreed to share me. I was planning to do the dissertation committee stuff on my own time, but I have been given permission to work on it during work hours. My director, assistant director, and supervisor are all very supportive, and they know that there are not many opportunities for advancement where I currently am, so they are allowing me to perform my chair responsibilities during work hours in hopes that it will eventually open a door to further advancement. It turned into a bit of an odd situation. I was 'hired' to do chair stuff, but then this past week, Darlene asked me for my transcripts and a CV so she could vet me for the position. She said she was working with HR and that I had nothing to worry about on my end. On Friday, she emailed me to tell me that I needed to apply for a part-time faculty position that was going to be opened for me on the website and that I would need to 'interview' for the position. It is all formalities, but I have never gotten a job before I interviewed (at least never where I knew I was hired, lol). My interview is scheduled for Tuesday morning and Darlene told me not to prepare for it--that it is going to be very informal and last about 30 to 45 minutes. What is really exciting is that I will officially be considered faculty, so eventually, if a full-time faculty position opens, I may be able to slide into it. I have already been assigned my first two student and have my own class, although it will not be officially mine until next term when all the paperwork is processed. I will appear as the profesor everwhere except in the professor profile, which currently shows my students' committe member. I am not sure that the students will even look at that section of Blackboard, though. If they do, Jan told me that I can just tell them we share the class. I spoke with one of my students last week, but the other has not contacted me yet inspite of the fact that I have reached out to him twice. I have a feeling I am going to have trouble with him.
I mentioned taking a break from school for a bit and part of the reason is that I am contemplating changing my major. I elected to pursue the master of public health for personal reasons. I have been interested in health and nutrition for many years and I thought this degree might be a way to shift into the field. However, now that I will be working in the business college, I am contemplating pursuing an MBA instead. Business does not really interest me much, but my undergraduate degree is in human resources management, and there is an HR concentration in the MBA track, so that is what I am considering doing. The only problem is that I do not want to take the research methods class, so I am trying to figure out if a statistics class I took back in 2000 will satisfy the requirement. I took four research methods classes in my PhD program, but apparently classes won't transfer between education levels, meaning a doctoral RM class will not transfer into a master's level program. I think it's stupid, but if the stats class won't transfer in, I will petition for a substitution and argue that I could teach the RM class, which I could. Hopefully I will know something in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, I am going to relax and enjoy life for awhile.
Well, I think that is all the news I have right now. All I really have on my agenda for today is a bit of house cleaning. I plan to stay inside since it's supposed to rain on and off all day. Fortunately, I did my grocery shopping yesterday, so I have nowhere to go. I hope you all have a great new week, and happy Labor Day early!
