Lost in the Maize

Well I guess it had to happen one day – after hanging out in QUACs (QUasi Academic Concerns) for more years than I care to remember, I am finally a bona fide academic!  Last week I shed my visiting professor status at the University of Michigan and took up the mantles of Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and the Charles and Rita Gelman Risk Science Professor – an honor so weighty I’m in danger of getting neck-ache!  But of course with the titles (which I’m learning seem to replicate faster than Tribbles within academic circles) comes a boatload of responsibilities, not to mention a precipitous learning curve!

As any rookie academic could have told me, I’ve just embarked on a lifestyle that requires at least 72 hours a day worth of effort – 24 hours for the stuff I want to do, 24 hours for the stuff I have to do, then 24 hours for all those things that total strangers inexplicably think I should be doing!  No sweat – as my long-suffering family will tell you, I’ve been playing that game for a while now.  But playing it as a newbie within a venerable academic institution – that’s where things get interesting.  Because at this moment it seems like I’ve just been thrown into the deep end of an alternative universe that is almost, but not quite, like the real world.

To help me come to grips with these murky yet fascinating new waters, I’ve decided to start a weekly diary on 2020 Science – this is the first one.  The intention is to post a “Lost in the Maize” blog each Friday on my new life as an academic.  The fact that this is being written on a Saturday shows that I’m already learning that time in academia is a rather fluid concept!

I’m not sure anyone will want to read these ramblings, but it seems a pity not to capture something of the new opportunities, new challenges and new lifestyle that I’m coming to terms with.  It also means I can still continue to post stuff on the 2020 Science blog when I’m too knackered to say anything intelligent! (Just to be clear, I will be continuing to post the usual “insightful, innovative and cutting edge” stuff I’m sure you’ve come to expect from 2020 Science – but maybe not as often!)

For now though, I need to go off and spend some time getting my head around this coming week – I fly out to China at some unearthly hour tomorrow for a World Economic Forum meeting, followed by a committee meeting at the National Academies in Washington DC on Friday.  I’d like to say it should be fun, and it probably will be – as long as I can carve out those other 48 hours a day while I’m on the road for all the other stuff that needs doing.

I’ll let you know how I get on in next week’s Lost in the Maize.

Note:  Just on the remote off-chance that you’re scratching your head over the title of this series, the official colors of the University of Michigan are Maize and Blue – but you knew that!

Related posts:

1. Brushing off the academic time planner