Career Development

(I've been busy lately. Hence the several entries in quick succession.)

Last week, I attended this workshop geared toward women in science pursuing careers in academia, who were starting to consider their first faculty jobs. So women just like me. Lots of useful sessions on things like negotiation for your position, balancing career and family, managing the two-body problem, writing research statements, etc. The big take home point was that you should have a 5-year plan, and update it regularly. It motivated me to update my CV today for the first time in ages. Boy, I have a lot more on it that I did just a year ago!

Computer woes

My laptop is acting up.

It started last week, when it totally froze up while I was using Safari. I couldn't restart it, even the power button refused to do anything, so I ended up taking out the battery to restart it. Now Safari won't run. Period.

Then this afternoon, I tried to open a Powerpoint file, and my computer froze up again while loading the file. Took the battery out again. Now the computer freezes up everytime I try to open a file in Powerpoint.

(It's a Mac Powerbook G4, running Mac OS X v.10.3.7, in case any has any useful advice for me...?)

So I lost half my afternoon to fighting with my computer. I've had to resort to using Internet Explorer, which has a number of annoying "features." Sigh. I plan to take the computer in to our local sysadmin tomorrow and hope she has a clue how to fix this beyond wiping the thing and reinstalling from scratch.