Tag: wheel

Myscot Wheel (Update)

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

X-posted from the socials, a note about a job change:

Figure 1. Updated myscot wheel1Otto the Orange is at the twelve o’clock position in the first myscot wheel mock-up I created (and posted to Flickr), which implicitly clocks the genre to 2004, the move from Kansas City to Syracuse and matriculating in CCR. I am seeing EWM entries about myscot wheels made in 2006 and 2009., or the institutions whose halls I have travelled.

This morning I updated the many-years-forged and still turning myscot wheel, whose every stop along the way has been powerfully rewarding2By “rewarding” I mean rich with realizations, commiserations, and learning. Louise Phelps emphasized to me, as I was nearing graduation from Syracuse, that every faculty position, no matter how high-gauged or low-gauged the system, could serve as a poignant teacher if we simply choose to look at it that way. and whose zenith position now reflects my most recent—and hopefully last ever—job change. Today is as apt as any to share the news with you all, since it is my first day as faculty at the University of Michigan. I will be on research leave/duty off campus through June 30 and begin a term as Director of the Sweetland Center for Writing in July. Goes without saying and also WITH saying that I am profoundly grateful to everyone who made this possible—you and you and you, friends and colleagues and students, encouragers, urgers of patience during patches of uncertainty in the long run-up, confidential external reviewers, and more. I hesitated to social-mediate the news but nonetheless wanted friends and family whom I haven’t told yet to know; plus, Is., who is in her first year in Ann Arbor (after transferring to U-M), thriving and loving it, nudged me over the holidays to share it, homecoming that it is, and here goes, an old taking the advice of a young, as they sometimes should. 💛💙〽️ #myscotwheel #jobchange #update #goblue

Notes

  • 1
    Otto the Orange is at the twelve o’clock position in the first myscot wheel mock-up I created (and posted to Flickr), which implicitly clocks the genre to 2004, the move from Kansas City to Syracuse and matriculating in CCR. I am seeing EWM entries about myscot wheels made in 2006 and 2009.
  • 2
    By “rewarding” I mean rich with realizations, commiserations, and learning. Louise Phelps emphasized to me, as I was nearing graduation from Syracuse, that every faculty position, no matter how high-gauged or low-gauged the system, could serve as a poignant teacher if we simply choose to look at it that way.

Reinventing the Wheel

/ Derek Mueller / 5 Comments

⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

Despite an abbreviated work session this morning, I found time to download and
install the latest version of CMap Tools, an
application I grew fond of during coursework and then inexplicably uninstalled
twenty months ago, just after I used it to map the dissertation I’ve been
working at ever since. About the latest version: what’s not to love?  I thought
about it in the first place because I had a few ideas for a new map-sketch, the
raw start to an article I intend to draft before summer’s end.

I’ll say more about the application and the article another time, perhaps,
but all of this is a roundabout way of getting to the more pressing issue:
because I re-installed CMap Tools, I also rediscovered an old, forgotten
myscot wheel
folder.  The myscot wheel is an idiosyncratic cluster of mascots from programs where
I’ve worked and studied, a wheel because the figures are arranged in a circle.
For just over two months, since mid-February, I’ve had cause to add to it,
celebratory cause. 

Myscot Wheel (update)

The new, improved wheel gives it away. As the culmination of my
job search, eight weeks ago I accepted a position for this coming fall as an Assistant Professor of
English at Eastern Michigan University. 
In addition to being so warmly welcomed by great colleagues and preparing for a
job I look forward to starting, the move to Ypsi-Arbor later this summer also means something of a homecoming for me. I
grew up in Michigan and have always referred to it proudly as home.

As tempted as I am to gush on, I’ll refrain for now and instead
loosely commit to a series–eventual entries on the position, on the courses I will be
teaching in the fall, on the market and anything worth sharing about how I
approached it. But there you have today’s circuit: CMap Tools, an updated myscot wheel,
and an upbeat announcement about joining EMU.