Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!

I hope you found exactly what you wanted from Santa under your tree.

Christmas Cheer

I just wanted to share some Christmas cheer this Christmas Eve by sharing today's Garfield comic strip. Click on it to see a larger, more readable version.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Celebrating in the Southwest

I wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday season from Lubbock, Texas. I decided to spend a few days before Christmas with good friends there. Then on Christmas Eve we are moving on to spend the holiday in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

It will definitely be the warmest Christmas that I've had in years, even with temperatures in the fifties.

Midseason Cancellations

ABC has cancelled two of its midseason replacements.

First canceled was Day Break, a show given Lost's time slot while it went on winter hiatus. The ratings were abysmal and the program was canceled. However, if you want to see the remaining episodes you can do so at abc.com.

The other program canceled was William Shatner's foray into game shows. Show Me The Money, the program he hosted, had been picked up for six more episodes two weeks ago. But then last week it was canceled. An odd move by ABC after ordering more episodes. And ABC seems to mean business because, unlike Day Break, any mention of Show Me The Money has been removed from the abc.com web site.

Hilarious Video

I had a link to the video below sent to me recently. I must say that it had me laughing incredibly hard. I figured I'd share it with anyone reading this who might be interested, though I'm sure many people have seen it before. But be aware-it should have a PG-13 rating.

And now I present to you the Bing Bong Brothers:

Future Looks Incredibly Uncertain

I’m getting to a point where the nerves are starting to get to me. My future is uncertain and I’m not sure what to do. I’ve done all that I could over the past five years and nothing has yet come through. It’s the one part of my life right now that I have no control over and it’s making me crazy.

What I’m talking about is the job application process for next fall.

As of this morning I’ve submitted applications for ten different faculty positions that start in Fall, 2007. I’ve had one telephone interview, which I thought went very well (thought I have no frame of reference), but that is all. Friends around me are getting in-person interviews and I know that some schools have already filled their faculty positions.

But where does that leave me?

I really do feel like I’m in a state of flux with a very uncertain future. I’m on track to have my dissertation completed this spring (early summer at the latest). Then what do I do when it’s completed if I don’t have a job teaching? There’s no guarantee that I can teach here at IU. And do I really want to go back to doing the menial type jobs that I was doing before I went into graduate school? Is that why I went on to get my Ph.D.?

I’ve been going through these bouts of fear and depression during the entire process, but they are coming more and more frequently as I hear about the successes others are having. I really thought that I had set myself up well so that I would be a top job candidate. My CV is quite good, or so I am told, and I do have publications. I also made sure to get teaching experience so that I would be more appealing to a school on that front as well. I just wish I knew what it is that I am lacking that these schools are looking for.

Final Fall Tally

I officially ran 63 participants through my dissertation experiment over the last two and a half weeks. It was a long and tiring process, but now I get to work with the data to see what kind of results I may have.

But I still have 20 more to run in the spring.

What Was I Thinking?

In addition to running my dissertation experiment over the past week, which I will have a final update later today, I’ve been grading the final papers for my class.

In going through them I began wondering what I was thinking assigning such a large paper. Each paper ended up being a minimum of 5 pages, with some as many as 10. And I had one for each of my 35 students. What was I thinking giving this assignment?

I gave the students explicit instructions on how to structure their papers and how important it was for it to be in their own words. Yet I found two of my students had plagiarized portions. What was I thinking giving this assignment?

A couple of students went overboard. I instructed them to print and hand in the library database entry for the articles that they were using for this assignment. Ten of the students turned in their articles in their entirety, giving me each 80 to 100 extra sheets of paper to carry. WHAT WAS I THINKING GIVING THIS ASSIGNMENT?

I guess I have to chalk it up as a learning experience. Seeing as how this was my first time teaching a course on my own some of what I did throughout the semester hit while many things I did missed. I’m not sure where this assignment falls. I think many of the students got something out of it, but was it worth what I had to do with the papers over the past week?

I guess that this was yet another step in the process of making me a good professor.

Is It Any Wonder I'm Dead Tired?

I'm not sure who out there wants to know, but just in case you do here's a dissertation update:

48 participants run through the experiment so far
7 people no-showed
16 more people scheduled

At 90 minutes a participant, I've run experiments for 72 full hours!

Getting Closer and Closer to Completion

Here's another dissertation update:

39 participants run through the experiment so far
6 participants no-showed
23 more people scheduled

I definitely need at least 85 participants now. Looks like it's time to complete a human subjects ammendment for recruiting during the spring semester.

New Coach Actually Makes a Better Team

I’m now seeing my fourth women’s basketball coach here at Indiana University in the ten years I’ve lived in Bloomington, and the third in the past three years. After the 2004-2005 season coach Kathi Bennett resigned from the position after five years as head coach. She was replaced by Sharon Versyp, who left after only one season to take a job at IU’s biggest rival Purdue. Now the coach is Felisha Legette-Jack, and she is seeing some immediate success. This is one of the best starts that I’ve seen the women’s team have in many years.

The team is currently 7-1, and for the first time in years they are getting votes in the AP and USA Today polls. These polls only rank the top 25 vote getters, but if they went to 30 Indiana would have been 30th on the AP poll and 27th on the USA Today poll. This is amazing for a team who, over the past few seasons, haven’t always looked their best.

I’ve been fortunate to have one of the women’s basketball players in my class this semester and I had the opportunity to ask her what the difference is between this season and seasons past, and she seemed to attribute it a lot to Coach Legette-Jack. The attitude that she brings to the sport and to the team definitely seems to be rubbing off on her players.

The women’s basketball team plays 22nd ranked Bowling Green tonight at Bowling Green. If they can win, and I have all the confidence that they can, I’ll see the IU women’s basketball team ranked for the first time that I can remember.

Another Update

For those out there possibly wanting to know how my dissertation is going:

29 participants run through the experiment so far
4 participants no-showed
36 more people scheduled

80 participants originally wanted (40 male, 40 female) in total, but due to some data collection errors that number is now up to between 85 and 90

Looks like I'll definitely be running more subjects during the beginning of spring semester.

No Shows: The Plague of Experimental Research

People lead busy lives. I fully understand and sympathize with that. The past fifteen weeks have been some of the busiest that I’ve ever had.

College students, particularly at this time of the semester, often don’t know if they’re coming or going. With final project, papers and exams looming, other things seem relatively insignificant in comparison.

I’m currently running my dissertation experiment. So far I have had 30 people sign-up to participate. Of that thirty, 25 have showed up, 2 e-mailed me to cancel and reschedule, and the last 3 didn’t show up and I never heard from them.

In my experience here in the Institute for Communication Research, that is an awesome ratio. I’ve had 25 successful participants and only 3 have blown me off completely. I’m sure that with everything that has been mounting in their classes and in their personal lives, my experiment didn’t even enter their minds after they signed up. But still, as a researcher, this irks me just a bit.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the undergraduates at Indiana University and specifically in the Department of Telecommunications are great. As both an Associate Instructor and now as the Instructor-of-Record I have encountered hundreds of great students here at IU. But somehow it is these select few that can’t even send an e-mail to let me know that they’re not going to show up that get my goat.

Overall my dissertation is going great. I’ve had a few bumps with data collection along the way, but that was inevitable. And maybe I’m taking this just a little too personally. But waking up before 7am so that I can be here for a 9am participant who doesn’t show up just gets me riled up.

More Bite the Dust

I haven’t had much to say about the fall television season lately. I can report that all of the freshman series that I had not previously discussed here I this blog have either been picked up for full season runs or at the very least some additional episodes in excess of their original order.

That is, all freshman series except for one: The Nine.

The Nine was a very inventive series following nine characters that are linked together through their experiences during a bank robbery. The Nine had the coveted Wednesday at 10pm slot following ABC’s hit series Lost, but were unable to capitalize on the audience. I must admit that I gave the show a shot and enjoyed the first couple of episodes that I watched. It was well written, acted, and put together. But there wasn’t really anything there to keep me tuning in each and every week. I gave up on it after week three. While it hasn’t been officially cancelled, The Nine has been pulled from ABC’s schedule for the time being.

Also biting the dust is a midseason replacement. That’s right. A series picked to replace a cancelled series has too been canceled. CBS’ cancelled Smith early on. They recently replaced it with 3 Lbs, a series about neurosurgeons, and it was cancelled after three airings.

Things Are Starting to Calm

I have been very lax in my blogging as of late. However, my fall semester finally seems to be settling down some. Must be because it’s about to end.

This is the last week of classes. I’ve finished all of my lectures. All that remains is for the class to finish its final assignment, which I will receive on Wednesday. Then I will have a little more than a week to read 35, 5-10 page papers. In the spring I revert back to being a research assistant, this time for the Telecommunications Department chair Dr. Walter Gantz.

My dissertation is now in full swing. So far I’ve run 25 subjects in one week. I am now to what I consider the most fun part-pulling all of the data together as it comes in and making sense of it. I’ll be working on this throughout winter break and into the spring semester, but you can bet I’ll be having a good time doing it.

But what this semester has done to me is prevent me from reporting here on the various developments that I enjoy writing about: interesting stories coming out of the sports world, developments in the television programming strategies of the major broadcast networks, and just random yet interesting stories that I read about. I do plan to rectify that and get back on a regular posting schedule ASAP.

Dissertation Progress

For those out there interested:

20 participants run through the dissertation experiment so far
49 more scheduled this semester

80 wanted (40 male, 40 female) in total

The end of the semester is the best time to get student subjects, particularly when they are offered extra credit in one of their classes. This is the very first time I've ever run an experiment where I've only had one person not show up out of 21 people scheduled!