Reflections on the past decade

It's hard to believe that today is the last day of my twenties. I feel like this decade has gone by in a flash. I've been thinking about what my life was like 10 years ago, on the eve of my 20th birthday. Jason and I had just moved to Virginia, I had just started my junior year at Virginia Tech, and we were living in a small apartment with Chloe (who was just as mean and fat as she is today). I thought then that leaving my teenage years behind meant I was getting old. I was actually quite upset about turning 20- what a fool I was!

Over the next decade I had some major life changing experiences. At 21, we added Haley cat to our family (seriously, y'all know that I love that cat way more than I should, so this was a very important event). That year we also moved into our first house, a rental, but still a big deal for us, and I started grad school. At 22, we got married on a perfect sunny day with everyone we loved in attendance. At 23, we rescued Anna, our crazy mutt, who taught us some very important lessons about patience. That spring I gave my first ever lecture and knew instantly that I would become an educator. That summer we moved to Georgia so I could start my PhD. At 24, I got my first taste of teaching in a large course, as a guest lecturer to 320 students, and the adrenalin rush lasted for hours. At 25, I taught a entire course by myself and began to realize the magnitude of that task and the impact you can have on people's lives. Years 26-28 kind of ran together. I spent a lot of time in a dark room with an amazing microscope and my iPod, certainly the best moments of my research career. I started working on biology education research and learned a lot about pedagogy. I taught graduate students and became a mentor to a few. I discovered a love of yoga which gave me an even more optimistic attitude on life (if that was even possible).

The past year has been the most transformative of all. On my 29th birthday, I was here in Laramie for the first time, interviewing for my dream job, meeting wonderful people who have since become great friends and colleagues. Two days later on the flight back home, I saw the Rocky Mountains for the first time from a little puddle jumper plane, and wept in complete awe of the majesty of it. Three weeks later, I got the best phone call of my life, standing in the hall at Coverdell, Jason standing with me, looking into my eyes with a pride I had never seen before. We ran through the halls spreading the news and hugging all our friends. That night we went out to dinner and bought the most expensive bottle of whiskey we could find, which stands now in our bookcase with an inscription we wrote that night.

Over the next few months, I worked hard to finish my research and then to write my dissertation. Some days I stayed in my PJs and wrote from breakfast to dinner (I was going to say dawn to dusk, but I think we all know that I never see dawn). I learned more during that time than I did in all 6 years of my PhD- it's a shame you only write that thing at the very end. Some days I broke down, convinced I would never finish, and Jason had to pick me back up. But finally I finished, and defended, and graduated, with all of my family watching. Three weeks later we spent our last and most bittersweet night in Georgia, surrounded by some of the best friends of my life.

And now, on the eve of 30, I am feeling grateful and happy and more than a little reflective. Except for the past 5 months, I spent the entire last decade as a college student, and now I am finally living the life that I worked for all those years. And it feels wonderful.

With love and gratitude to all who helped me make it this far,
Carly

First Snow in Wyoming!

Hi y'all!

It's snowing!! In early October, which seems crazy early but apparently is really late for the first snow of the season. I know that in a few months, I'll be totally sick of the snow, but for now, it's pretty exciting.

Having lived in the south for so long, a snow day feels like a vacation, an excuse not to leave the house all day, because everything would be closed anyway. I think I'm gonna have to get over that idea- I have to go to work today! Here are a few pictures (and a video!) for you to enjoy while you bask in your 70 degree fall weather. Try to control your jealousy.

Love, Carly

Warm and dry in my new parka

The first 6 weeks

Hello friends- have you missed me? I realized today that I haven't posted since the first day of class. As you might imagine, I've been a little busy with the new job. It's been fantastic, but geez, it's really exhausting. I realized a few days ago that I had not taken a single day off of work since the first day of the semester. I'm usually at work until 7 pm, I'm at work much of the weekend, and I frequently wake up in the middle of the night and work a few hours until I can fall back to sleep. My students must think I never sleep, with all the emails I've sent at 3 in the morning. Luckily, I really am enjoying it and am super motivated to get things done, so it doesn't feel so much like work.

After a month on the job, the biggest surprise for me has been how very different the students here are compared to the ones at Georgia. They are super polite and sweet, and also pretty shy. In contrast to the conversations I overheard on the UGA bus (oh, the stories), I rarely hear Wyoming students talking about how wasted they got last night, or how many shots they pounded. I don't presume to think they're not partying; I think they just know better than to advertise it in a state where everyone knows everyone else. Most of them are from teeny tiny towns in Wyoming, and Laramie is the big city to them. Many of them are real life cowboys, wearing fancy belt buckles not bought at a store, but earned by roping cattle or riding broncos. This weekend one of my students broke his jaw and lost some teeth when a bull kicked him in the face while he was working as a rodeo clown.

I love my job!

Okay, I realize I just posted about work last night, but holy crap, I love my job, and I just had to shout it from the mountaintops (quite literally, we live at 7200 ft, people)! Today was just the best day ever. I went and introduced myself to the 3 sections of General Biology, 600 people total, like 99% of whom are brand spanking new freshman. And they were so sweet and polite and excited, with big sincere smiles and eager eyes. I had 3 of them stop me while I was walking around campus later, to ask me questions about lab, and thank me profusely for answering them. I helped one lost and anxious girl find her classroom, which was just right around the corner, but still she was so appreciative. I felt like her mom, but in a good way.

And the grad students were awesome today too. I had meetings with my head TAs, who are both just full of enthusiasm and fantastic ideas. One of them wants to create a lab about photosynthesis- hallelujah, because I really have no idea how to make that interesting, but she is pumped about it! And then, out of the blue, one of my TAs stopped by my office just to tell me how passionate he is about teaching and how he wants to make his career in biology education, and hoped that I could offer him some guidance. Sound like anyone you know? My entire relationship with Peggy Brickman began almost the exact same way! Naturally, I love him now.

So, in short, my job is awesome. I can already say that all of those days when I swore and cried and hated my life as a grad student, and there were many, were completely worth it to bring me to this place. And I truly hope that you will all find the same joy in your work someday, if you haven't already.

Love, Carly

Work, work, work

I promised another post before the semester begins, and this is that post. Classes start tomorrow, and my quiet little town nearly doubled in size this weekend. Ah, undergrads. So before the craziness ensues, I wanted to fill you in on what I've been up to so far at my new job.

First things first, check out my office!! Having never had more than a lab bench to myself, I am really loving it. True, it has beige cinderblock walls and no window, but it is big and quiet and all mine. Since I inherited some seriously retro furniture, I'm trying to just go with it. For example, check out my funky light teal candy dish I scored from a flea market, which match perfectly the color of my 60's classroom chairs. Oh yeah. And just last week I snatched up an old Carolina Biological poster from the 70s (not pictured) of an animal cell. It's actually quite beautiful- it looks like a watercolor. And I have my eye on a 54" Jackson Pollock print, which someone really must buy me for my birthday, to go on the wall over my meeting table. So, you can see, I've really been focusing on the important things during my first month on the job.

My 60's hand-me-down office furniture, which is well built if not particularly
attractive. That desk weighs at least 100 pounds, I kid you not.

Summer fun

Hello friends,

Boy, have we been busy since my last post. We have been to Colorado and/or Cheyenne at least once a week, attended 3 concerts, 2 rodeos, and a baseball game, been out with new friends several times, had the Jordans come to visit, and just this weekend we drove to Iowa and back. Oh, also I started my job on July 5, and Jason's been working in a lab on campus. See? I told you we've been busy. Plus, I never did blog about my trip to New Mexico. So I guess I have a lot of catching up to do here. Man, this blogging thing is harder than I thought. Where to begin...

Way back in June I went to Las Cruces, NM for the ABLE meeting- Association for Biology Laboratory Educators. It was awesome! ABLE was absolutely the best conference ever, and I vow to return every year. The amazing Kris Miller from UGA and my new colleague Liz went too, which was awesome. The sessions were great, we met lots of cool people doing even cooler things in their labs, and were totally inspired to shake things up back home in our own labs. We also took a field trip to watch the sun set at the White Sands National Monument, which was just amazingly beautiful.

Sunset over the dunes

What the Hail?

Before moving here, Jason and I were talking about what kind of extreme weather we might get in Wyoming. It's pretty easy to rule out hurricanes and tropical storms. And although it's pretty flat here in Laramie, with mountain ranges on three sides, tornadoes are very rare. We figured about all we would get here would be blizzards. We did not realize that we were moving into "hail alley".

We love Colorado!

This is blog part 2 about our Colorado vacation. In addition to our whitewater rafting adventure, we also did a lot of site seeing in Denver and Boulder. In Denver, we went to the Museum of Nature and Science, the Zoo, and the Denver Museum of Art.

The Zoo and the Museum of Nature and Science sit in a big beautiful park just minutes from downtown Denver. The Museum of Nature and Science is freaking massive. You could spend the entire day there and still not see everything. We only stayed a few hours, but saw a lot of really cool stuff. We went to a very thorough exhibit about pirate life, with hundreds of artifacts recovered from the Whydah, a pirate ship that sunk off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717. (We thought of you, Sarah. You would have loved it!) We also saw a show in the planetarium about black holes. It was very informative, and I loved that it made no apologies for saying with certainty that the universe began with a Big Bang. The planetarium is also really nice, with comfy reclining seats and a giant half sphere ceiling that the show was projected onto. On the roof of the museum is an atrium and veranda, with great views of the city and the Rocky Mountains beyond.

The planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science

View of the Denver skyline, with the Rocky Mountains in the background

Rafting in the Rockies

This is part 1 of a 2 part post about how awesome of a time we had last week on our Colorado vacation. On Monday, our 7 year anniversary, we went whitewater rafting for the first time. We drove about an hour west of Denver, on one of the most spectacular drives I have ever been on, to Idaho Springs, CO to raft on Clear Creek. Now, I made the reservations a month ago, naive to the situation that was brewing in the mountains. All over Colorado and Wyoming, rivers and creeks are flooding. Usually, the snowpack on the Rockies melts slowly as temperatures gradually increase during May and June. This year, the Colorado snowpack was at 250% of the normal level, and the snow and cold lasted into the end of May. So instead of a gradual thaw, the snow is melting very fast and pouring into waterways.

When we got to the rafting site, we were warned about the dangerous conditions. The creek is so high and fast that the usual 2 hour path takes just 45 minutes, and most of the rapids had been increased in class (rapids are ranked class 1-6, with 6 being essentially unpassable). If I'm being honest, I pretty scared and was seriously considering downgrading our trip to the beginners (kiddie) trip. But Jason was brave and insisted that we would be fine.

Our house

 Hello friends,

Everyone (mostly my Mom) is asking for pictures of our new house, so here they are. We are almost completely unpacked and settled, we just need to do some decorating and hang some pictures and we'll be done.

Front of the house- we finally have a garage!!

Howdy

Hello, friends! You have discovered Carly's first blog. After much deliberation, I have decided on the name Professor on the Prairie, for three reasons: First, I am a professor (well, technically, I'm an Academic Professional Assistant Lecturer, but let's not split hairs). Second, I live in Laramie, Wyoming, which is on the very western edge of the North American prairie, just before the Rocky Mountains. And third, I used to love the Little House on the Prairie. In fact, every day when I watched it, I would insist that my mother braid my hair in pigtails just like Laura Ingalls Wilder. Imagine the cuteness.

I decided to start a blog because I know that in the coming months and years, I will have all kinds of new experiences to share with you. On this page you will read about life in Laramie, our travels around the mountain west, the challenges of teaching freshman, and how I manage to deal with 8 months of winter (assuming that I don't freeze to death). Jason will also guest post from time to time, and tell you all about his new life as a grad student. For now, we are both on vacation, and the weather is absolute heaven. But I can already tell, things are just a little different here. More to come soon.

Love, Carly