Professor for one year (week 38 and 39): Professional health pattern

The last teaching week in 2013, I was quite happy to still feel good.  I didn't catch a cold so far although a lot of people got sick around me.  But then came Christmas and a two weeks break.  And guess what?  After three days off (I slept longer, started to read one of the books from my ever growing to-read-shelf, had nice walkings in almost sunny weather, no class preparations, checking my e-mail accounts only once a day, ...), I first faced a sore throat and that was the end of my holidays. 

As usual, I had a really bad cold and couldn't enjoy my vacation as much as I hoped to.  But I could have probably guessed it:  There seems to be a professional health pattern with teachers/instructors.  Everybody thinks they have a lot of vacation and in general don't do much.  However, comes vacation, they get sick and don't do all the exciting stuff they planned to do.  We do everything to not get sick during a lecture period, we try all kinds of household remedy to fight first signs of sore throats, colds of even flu.  We actually give classes on crutches or with really bad back aches.  We even try to schedule surgeries and long-term treatments to take place during vacation and live on painkillers until then.

You can probably guess the profession of patients when looking at when they get sick -- people facing health problems during their vacation are most probably teaching somewhere.

However, we could enjoy a few Winter days at the Baltic Sea:

It looks a bit like a Caspar David Friedrich painting, doesn't it?

Professor for one year (week 36): Being cheered

Last weekend, I had a non-academic adventure: I ran the Silvesterlauf in Zurich.  I was one of the Happy Runners, which means I did the four big rounds in 60 to 70 minutes, summing up to 10km.

I love long-distance running, I did the Berlin Marathon several times and I ran some of the races as part of the ZüriLaufCup over the past years.  I will never win my age group, in fact, I'm always in the last quarter or sometimes even at the very end of a race.  But guess what: That's perfect!

People cheer for the very first runners, but those are usually very fast; so as viewer, you can hardly identify them.  And they are so focused, they won't realize who is cheering and what people are shouting.  In the middle field, it's mostly extremely crowded and runners hear a lot of cheering and shouting -- it's hard to identify the viewers who are actually cheering for you.

When it comes to the last runners, the situation is easy to grasp.  Runners are slower and only a few at a time, viewers can easily read the names on the number bib -- the Swiss print the actual number consisting of digits and the first name, most of the time the name even in a bigger font (Germans don't print the name or only in a very small font, so nobody can read it).  And viewers like it when runners react to their cheering.  There is a lot of high-fiving at the end of the field.  And even the marshals are a bit relaxed and cheer for you.  I served as marshal for the marathon part of the Zurich IronMan a few times, so I know both perspectives.

Of course, people pronounce my name differently, depending on the cultural background, or it's even changed into "Christin".  As long as it's close enough to the original, I take it as cheering for me -- when I hear "Natalie" or "Beat", then I know there are still runners following me. 

So the last Silversterlauf was a one-hour cheer-up -- you hardly find this in academia.  Recieving notifications for accepted papers or grants isn't as exciting as being cheered by completely foreigners all the way.  Or when was the last time somebody rung a big cowbell (Treichel) just for you as you ran up the Rennweg? 

Professor for one year (week 19 and 20): Vacations!

After 22 weeks of teaching in a row, exams, and grading those exams, I finally went on vacation.  Usually, I take with me a lot of work (on paper and electronically), that I didn't manage to process the weeks before.  The idea is that during the next two weeks with no obligations, I will find enough time to  finally get this done and then I can start with a clean desk when I return to my office.  Fortunately or onfortunately, most of this work involves looking up information online, asking people for feedback via e-mail, and sending back or submitting PDFs.

This year, I left everything related to work at home.  I really needed two weeks of not doing any scientific work, but just go swimming and biking and reading some of the volumes from my "to-read-shelf."  And there is one thing that really supported this decision:  We didn't have Internet connection in our vacation appartment.  And there was even no wireless connection via smartphone possible in the entire village.  Great!  My "out-of-office message" worked quite well, I wasn't able to read or answer e-mail message for two weeks.  And two weeks is probably a perfect duration for vacation from work and from the Internet:  A lot of requests to read this and decide that had taken care of themselves when I returned.

I really can recommend vacations from the Internet -- there is no sense in doing work-related things during vacation.  It's better to come back to a not so clean desk with a refreshed mind than coming back to a clean desk still feeling somewhat exhausted.