Teaching camp: Part I

So this entry will be only partially about Arkansas the state, and more about my life at the University (of Arkansas).  Earlier this week, I attended the U of A "Teaching Camp" put on by the Teaching and Faculty Support Center.  The term "camp" is kind of a misnomer, as it was more like a conference, but I signed up for it at the beginning of the summer for two reasons. One, I can use my attendance at teaching camp as an indication of effort in the teaching domain.  Second, and probably more importantly, I figured if I were holed up in the woods with some other faculty for three days, maybe I could make a friend or two outside my department.  A far distant third was the goal of learning about teaching.  To be clear, it's not that I don't want to learn about teaching, because I truly do.  It's just that the central topic of this year's camp was online education, and I just don't see my department ever going to an online degree program, and I don't have the time or energy to develop an online course right now, so....it wasn't as much use to me.

Anyway, Doug dropped me off at the designated parking lot on Sunday afternoon, and after I graciously received my lunch bag with a water bottle and snacks, I boarded the bus. They packed the bus--every seat was eventually taken.  I sat next to a new faculty member from Curriculum and Instruction who told me about her recent trip abroad, and about halfway through the ride I started talking about musicals to another young female faculty member from the health department.

I boarded the bus having only a vague idea of where we were going.  I knew it was called "Petit Jean" and it was about 2 and a half hours from Fayetteville, but I still don't know how to pronounce "petit jean" and I sure couldn't get there without a map.  I also wasn't really sure what "camp" would mean. Were there cabins?  How rustic would it be?  Would we be assigned shared rooms?

As it turns out, the place was pretty nice. Here's the main building, designed with a "farmy" kind of look:

If you turn around from the entrance, you get this lovely view:

We checked in to our single rooms and I embarked on a little walk around the grounds. Don't ask me why, because it's been over 100 degrees in Arkansas and this day was no exception, but I found a nice little pond, a fitness center and a bunch of other buildings with rooms.  

 I won't bore you with the details of the actual content of the sessions, other than to say that the theme was distance education, so I learned more about online teaching than I ever thought I would learn.  At dinner, they randomly assigned us to tables with other faculty so that we would be forced to talk to different people, a process I was grateful for, because I (a) didn't know anyone, and (b) even if I had known someone, I would have just sat with them and not expanded my social circle.

After dinner and the evening session, teaching camp moved into the "social hour" with some snacks and booze.  I spent the time sitting at a table with a whole bunch of women and one dude, who eventually pulled out his guitar and began playing/singing for us.  During this time I also agreed to get up at 6am to go running with three of the other women.

Let me tell you, 6am on Monday came early, but I rolled out of bed at 5:50, got dressed and stumbled outside to run 3 miles with some people I barely knew.  This was one of those circumstances where peer pressure actually did me some physical good.

More on teaching camp adventures (with more photos) next time!

Fayetteville-aversary!

On July 17th, we celebrated our one year Fayetteville anniversary, or as I like to call it, our Fayetteville-aversary.  On July 16th, 2011, after being jerked around by the horrible moving company I hired for about a week, we finally left Albuquerque, spent that fateful night in the hell that is Amarillo, Texas, and rolled into Fayetteville in the afternoon of the 17th.

After collecting the keys to our new apartment, we unpacked the car, inflated the air mattress, and then headed out to find food and entertainment.  The latter guided our choices, mostly because it was the weekend Harry Potter 7 Part Dos came out in theatres, and I was dying to see it.  Had it been a normal weekend, I would have gone to a midnight show, or at the very least seen it on Friday night.  So we trekked up to the mall area, had dinner at the Olive Garden, and saw Harry Potter.

Coincidentally enough, Harry Potter 7 came on cable the day we moved into our new place this year.

To commemorate our one year Fayettevilleaversary, we decided to do the only logical thing: have dinner at the Olive Garden.  We are creating a tradition here....we will go to the Olive Garden on July 17th every year, and ONLY on July 17th.  Neither Doug nor myself are fans of the Olive Garden (except....unlimited breadsticks....mmmmmmmm), not because it is horrible, but because there are other non-chain Italian places that are far better.  Plus, if we're being honest here, I was soured against Olive Garden as "the competition" when I worked at Macaroni Grill for over five years. 

So, Olive Garden 2012?  Check. See you again next July, OG!  (Well, technically we'll see it whenever we pass you on our way to Target, but no need to get into semantic arguments with myself on my own blog).

Crepes and Armadillos

Like many college towns, Fayetteville has a decent turnover of shops and restaurants.  The good news for us is that we get to try out new places every once in awhile.  Last weekend we decided to visit the new coffee shop/crepe restaurant a half mile from our place.

We hopped on the trail and walked north toward Dickson street, the "entertainment" area of town.  I've mentioned the trail before, right?  The trail system that goes throughout Fayetteville, used regularly by the locals for biking, walking, and running?  Yes, that one.  Well, we were casually walking up the trail and heard a rustling in the bushes on the side of the trail.  When we looked closer, here's what we saw:

It's an armadillo.....an ALIVE armadillo!  Since moving to Albuquerque, I've seen my fair share of dead armadillos on the side of the highway in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and a few in Arkansas, but I've never seen an alive one so close to me.  It was super cute.

Then we went to the crepe-coffee joint, Arsagas. It's a local chain started about 20 years ago with several locations about town.  Supposedly they roast their own coffee, which I don't even know if I've tried, because we were there for the crepes.  This new branch has a charming, cozy vibe inside, and the back deck is HUGE, facing the trail (picture taken from the trail):

That's only half of the deck.  It's shady, and pretty, and the crepes were delicious.  While there we ran into a colleage of mine who was on the phone getting all excited about a "moderated mediation," to which I loudly dubbed him a nerd.  Although it is nerdy to be proudly exclaiming statistical findings at a restaurant, I can hardly say I blame him--I'd do the same!

Armadillos and crepes, ya'll.  Just two of the fine things Arkansas has to offer.

The Drive-in

Oh blog-o-sphere, how we have neglected you. The problem isn't that there is nothing to say, nor is the problem finding the time to post. The problem right now is that we are so behind with posting, verging on two months now, that I feel an enormous pressure to write ALL of the things that have happened to us in Arkansas. Essentially, to "catch up."

But I think I am going to take a page from a delightful friend of mine who has her own blog that she posts on only one day per week(if you're at all interested in reading a very thoughtful commentary on one couple's struggles and triumphs with fertility and pregnancy, check it out: http://www.storksandcabbages.com/). I thought to myself...I can handle posting one day per week. So that is the new plan, to post one day per week. If I want to write more, or if Doug does, great, but once a week is enough.

 I will try to be patient about describing all that has happened to us in the last few months; we drove to Albuquerque, got married, went on a honeymoon, drove back to Arkansas, moved, said many goodbyes to a friend who is now abroad, and are now settling into our early-married-persons routine. Those things can be described in time.

Today I thought I'd talk about a great American summer past time that we have been getting involved with this summer: Going to the drive-in. Apparently the first drive-in was patented in the early 1930s and reached the height of popularity in the late 1950s or early 1960s. I can tell you firsthand that the Fayetteville drive-in was basically frozen in time in 1964, and the people who work there have continued to age but are otherwise exactly the same.  Seriously, click on the link and go to the "photos" tab--it's amazing.

The drive-in appears to be a popular Fayetteville activity on the weekends in the summer time.  The "feature" starts around 9pm, and is often something current and popular (we saw The Avengers, Doug saw Men in Black III, tonight is Spiderman).  The second film starts half an hour after the first ends, and is something less desirable (Dark Shadows, Madagascar sequel 18, What to Expect when you're Expecting).  In between they show commercials that are at least 20 years old, and I actually find the commercials to be more interesting than the second movie.

It's a really chill and fun evening: bring a couple of camping chairs, blast the volume through the open window of your car stereo, try to "save" a spot for your friends to park next to you, and stock up on the snacks (we like "swalty," a popcorn that is both sweet and salty, and tantalizingly addictive).  Then sit down, watch the show, and make snarky comments to your friends, which is acceptable because the closest car is at least 10 feet away.  All in all, a great way to spend a summer evening, and a fun way to see those summer blockbuster movies which we don't really care that much about.

Though poor Doug, who's blood is like crack for mosquitoes, tends to get bitten up in the ridiculously humid Arkansas air.  I suppose even great things have their costs.  Or, to quote the barely-a-decade old Spiderman, in anticipation of tonight's viewing of the "reboot," with great power comes great responsibility.

Worlds Worst Renaissance Festival

A few weeks back, a Renaissance Festival appeared in town. It's kind of amazing that we even found out about it, because the advertising was minimal at best. In fact, I have no idea how we even heard about it! It's a local group putting on this Ren Fest, and they intend to do it twice a year; once in the spring, and once in the fall. As someone who feels mildly cheated out of getting to be a Ren Fest worker as a teenager due to the lack of festivals in central Illinois and not owning a car during college, I've had a soft spot in my heart for Renaissance Festivals. Meat on sticks, people in goofy costumes talking in accents, jousting, jesters, and let us not forget the ale. Or the mead--I still have clear memories of the honey wine I had in the fall of 2002 in the suburbs of Minnesota. Anyway, it was published as costing only $5, so we scheduled some time on a weekend afternoon to visit the Land of the Ye Olde. As it turns out, we were there for less than 20 minutes, and it was not worth the ten bucks it cost us to get in. The "festival" was at the Washington County Fairgrounds, and took up a wee bit of the vast fairground space. There was no jester, no jousting, no real food, and absolutely no mead. No king or queen, only a magician and some (bad) minstrels. Most of the "festival" was booths where people were selling fairy wings. It was mightily disappointing, let me tell you. Next year, though, we're going to go to the Tulsa Ren Fest which happens at some place called The Castle. Already sounds better, right? We couldn't go this year due to wedding planning and other obligations, but rest assured, I will make sure that Doug gets a good Ren Fest experience at some point in our lives. I swear it will be done (Princess Bride reference intended).

The last multiple choice exam ever....I hope.

Doug apologized for our two plus month blog hiatus in the last post, but I will throw my two cents in as well. We've been busy, what with our goal to see all ten of the Oscar nominated films (which we accomplished), my work (I took on a second grad student, I'm teaching two classes this semester instead of one, and I started seeing therapy clients again), planning a wedding, and fruitlessly (so far) training a cat not to bite our feet. I feel a bit like Count Rugen from The Princess Bride, "I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it; I'm swamped!" Except not as nefarious.

In addition to all of the above, for some crazy reason I decided that this would be the best time to study for and take the Examination for Practice in Professional Psychology (heretoforth known as the EPPP). That would be the 4-hour long multiple choice test one must take to become a licensed psychologist. The process of becoming licensed is, as in most disciplines, not very interesting, as it involves getting a graduate degree, applying to a state licensing board and proving you have the requisite background (sufficient number of clinical hours as part of the doctoral degree and post-doctorally), etc. Each state has slightly different requirements, but all of the states require, as part of the process, that an applicant take and pass the EPPP.

For those not in the know, it's a 225 question multiple choice exam, where 175 of the questions "count" toward your score (50 questions are experimental questions to be evaluated for later versions of the test), taken over 4 hours and fifteen minutes. It covers many aspects of psychology, primarily focused on clinical psychology (assessment and diagnosis of psychological disorders, treatment of disorders) but also on other areas of psychology. The idea is that clinical psychologists should have a broad knowledge of psychological functioning, including knowledge about memory, emotion, cognition, brain regions, development across the lifespan, as well as research methods and statistics. The one content area that was initially a bit surprising to me was Industrial/Organizational psychology, focused on issues of hiring, work-related motivation and job performance, and theories of leadership in the workplace. I think the idea is that a lot of psychologists have zero background in business, yet many are interested in opening a private practice, or will be working in a training environment, and the I/O stuff might be useful in the future.

The goal of this exam is to pass, or as a "glass half empty" person might put it, the goal is not to fail. In most states, a passing score is getting about 70% of the items correct. Or in more formal terms, on a scale from 200 to 800, passing is at least a 500. Some states have slightly higher benchmarks, but the majority (including Arkansas) require at least a 500.

I spent about 3 months studying for the EPPP, starting around Christmas. One of my friends loaned me some materials, so I walked to work while listening to an audio review, and I paid for access to a series of online practice tests. Over time I was able to spit back answers quickly and easily for content I'd heard repeatedly, and by the week of the test I felt moderately prepared.

The location of the testing center where I had to take the test is an hour away from Fayetteville, so as the test date approached I contemplated spending the night in the town so that I wouldn't have to get up at the crack of dawn to drive down to the test. But despite multiple priceline attempts, I didn't "win" a room at a cheap enough price to warrant it, so instead I got up well before the crack of dawn and drove down to Ft. Smith.

I'd forgotten how pretty the landscape is between Fayetteville and Ft. Smith. It's very hilly, through the Boston Mountains, and at sunrise it was particularly lovely. To my right the fog was settling in the nooks and crannies of the hills, and to my left the sun rose over the mountains:



The exam itself was pretty crappy, though I finished my first pass-through with enough time left over to go through all the questions I'd been iffy on, and I attempted to tabulate my score by categorizing the questions into (a) I feel pretty sure I got this, (b) I THINK I got this but am only 75% sure, (c) I got it down to two options, and (d) no idea. By that metric, I figured that I passed, but barely.

Come five days later, I was obsessively checking my email, knowing that the scores from the last half of the month are reported around the 4th or 5th of the following month. I taught my Thursday morning class and returned to find the scores had been posted. I must admit, my heart was pounding a bit faster when I clicked on the link, but I am delighted to say that I passed, with a much higher score than I anticipated, and one high enough that it will be accepted in any state. YAY!

So, although I maintain that I probably should have waited to take the EPPP this summer when the workload will be a little slower, I'm glad that it's over and now I just have to finish out the rest of my provisional period and then drive down to Little Rock for an oral exam before I can say that I'm a licensed psychologist. One more step complete!

Furry Addition

Yes, we know that we've neglected the blog as of late. We're sorry.

It strikes us at inopportune times. Like when we're out and about or about to go to bed. "Darn, I meant to blog about..." It's not as if we haven't had things to blog about. We've had plenty going on.

Probably the most exciting news is our entering the exciting world of pet ownership.

When looking for apartments here from Albuquerque, we were kind of at a disadvantage. We had a good idea of where in town we wanted to live, but other than that, we were kind of stuck with whatever we could find on Craigslist. We figured if we didn't like where we ended up, we could always move in a year when we would be able to see the places before signing a lease.

I'd have to say, since we hadn't actually seen the place, we lucked out. It's not the perfect place, but it's in a great location and the landlord is very nice. There were a few things we didn't like. It's a bit small, it doesn't get enough sunlight and pets are not allowed. Again, all of these problems could be rectified when we looked for our next place, but we both wanted a cat.

Jenn had asked if there was any leeway with the pets thing, and the landlord explained that there had been problem with a past tenant and he thought it was best for him to just institute that rule and we resigned ourselves to the fact that our days of having a cat would have to wait. It wasn't the end of the world.

Over the course of a few months, we had a few run-ins with mice in the apartment. We'd find food packages that had been chewed through and sometimes we'd find "presents" on the kitchen counter. We told our landlord, who sent the exterminator who set traps. The traps caught a couple of mice, but we'd still hear some rustling between the walls.

I should make it clear that this would happen about once a month, so it wasn't as if we were infested with them. Although we weren't overrun, we also didn't want mice in the house, which was reasonable.

Our landlord did what he could to find where they were entering from and making sure it was sealed, but Jenn took another approach. She used this opportunity to plainly suggest that maybe we wouldn't be having these problems if we had a cat. Our landlord either trusts us or is a push-over, because he agreed right away, and that weekend we went to the animal shelter.

We had originally sought out to get a young adult cat, because kittens can get a little rambunctious. The shelter workers took a few cats out for us to see, and they were all cute and all, but we instantly fell in love with a little 5-month-old orange tabby who was laying in a hammock in her cage named Lizzie.

After a few days for the shelter to check with our landlord, I was free to pick Lizzie up, though Jenn and I agreed that we'd be changing her name. The following morning, we settled on the name Margot Dorcas.

How we came up with the name is another long, convoluted story. Just know that the name references such things as Breaking Bad and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with a little Saved by the Bell thrown into the mix.

The shelter had told us that she had been adopted once before, but returned. She apparently had a tendency to bite. It was explained that she seems to be under the impression that feet and hands are toys, and we figured that that would be a habit that we could eventually get her to break.

And the shelter didn't lie. She bites. A lot. One of her favorite games is to hide under the bed. When one of us gets close enough, she reaches out and grabs our feet. It's literally the stuff nightmares are made of. I'm just glad that I didn't grow up afraid that a monster lived under my bed.

But aside from the biting, which is done playfully, she's a great addition to the house. Her first week here, I found her playing with a dead mouse (I'm assuming she killed it), so she's already made it worth it for the landlord.