Tag Archives: work

Knoxville, PhD, UTK

A Well-Deserved Update

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I realize it has been a long time since I posted any kind of update to the blog. My apologies.

With that apology comes the roll-out of a new blog template! I thought it was high time that my dark and drastic website design change to a brighter, cheerier, and easier to read look. Voila! Feels better already.

In case you haven’t been informed, my dear five readers, this semester has been one of substantial change for me, academically and professionally. I switched to working with Dr. Derek Alderman, Geography Department Head at UT Knoxville and all-around outstanding scholar in the fields of geographies of race and memory and the U.S South. In the process, I temporarily lost my funding at UT (but I will be back teaching Geography 101 in the Spring – yay!), started looking for jobs, completely changed up my dissertation ideas, and started working as a server at Puléo’s Grille at the Strawberry Plains Pike exit on I-40.

I plan to use my blog/website better, more frequently, and more professionally in the future, after being inspired by my new colleague Tyler Sonnichsen. But we all know I’ve made similar claims before!

Blogging, Busyness

Blogging from Work

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I’m two days into my new job as an IT Specialist II at the Instructional Technology Center at UTM and I’m already out of things to do.

Well, sort of…

I’m lacking some of the key software I need to get started on Web developing, but I thought I’d blog since it’s been at least a blue moon since my last post.

Since then I’ve:

Successfully defended my Scholars Project.
Finished finals.
Graduated.
Moved out of university housing and back into my parentals’ house for three weeks. This includes moving plenty of furniture, and lots of Karen’s stuff.
Joined the church league softball team…and subsequently only made it to one game of four. (Is it sad that I’m too busy to play softball during the summer?)
Drowned in insurance options from the university as a full-time staff person.
Set up my new cubicle and Mac Pro.
Received free swag for being a new employee (including scissors, tape dispenser and stapler!)
Drunk lots of coffee to stay awake after getting up at 7 since I have to be at work at 8ish.

And there’s more…but enough for now.

Busyness

Half a Month Later…

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How can it possibly be August 9 already?

Things have been really, really busy since coming back from Berlin. Catching up on sleep. Catching up on work. Catching up on Karen-time. You get the idea.

Work has been insanely busy. I have updated a ton of Web sites in the last two weeks: Psychology, ECCE, ITC, Financial Aid, Honors Program, Visual and Theatre Arts, etc. The last two weeks have been the final weeks of my co-student worker, Hannah Burcham, who is going to Mississippi State University with the National Student Exchange program. In the mean time, we’ve been training her highly capable replacement, Jen DeYeso in all of the wonderful jobs (and the tedious ones, too) we take care of on a daily basis at the ITC. Mix into this helping the occasional professor who wanders over for help, working on the registrations for three different training topics coming up in August and September, and planning for the training session I am doing this coming Tuesday — you get the idea of how busy it’s been.

I’ve also spent some time working on the TNGIC summer newsletter, getting together the stories we will be covering for the end-of-August publication. Now I need to start laying it out in InDesign this week before things get even more hectic with The Pacer and that little thing called school.

Speaking of my favorite newspaper, I worked the last few days of this week with The Pacer’s adviser, Tomi Parrish, on buying the remaining iMacs we need to fully handle our computing needs for the coming years. The good thing about these Macs is that we should be able to get a lot more use out of them than we’ve been getting out of the PCs we’ve used for years. Now they just have to be shipped and have software ghosted onto them by the Technical Services folks and brought over to our office. I’m looking forward to kicking off the new year with lunch and training on August 18. Then we start working on our First Flight edition for the incoming freshmen…and then off we go!

In other news, Karen and I have discovered the addicting Web site Nutrimirror — an online food journal that can really help ANYONE trying to eat healthier. As Karen saw on a newscast on her Destin vacation, keeping a food journal is one of the best ways to eat healthier and get/stay in shape. Nutrimirror is doing just that, and with time it should be a big help.

Finally, with all this going on a few of my other projects are still hounding me to start/finish them, including: more research and reading on my Scholars project, a photo-video for a wedding at the end of August, posting more photos from Berlin, and buying my books from Amazon/Half.com. Anything else…? This is more than I can keep up with in my head. Good thing I have to-do lists!