An Update from Calgary

Hi Family!

As a distraction, I decided to spend a little time on the interwebs tonight and thought it might be fun to update you as to how the trip to Alaska with Estelle is going.

What's it called? Operation Alaska Thunder

What's the purpose? To move Estelle Cowie to Ketchikan, Alaska.

Who's involved?  Yours truly and my best friend, Estelle Cowie.  Plus a Toyota Corolla, a very angry but drugged cat and of course all the stuff we can stuff into the car.

So we started out our perilous (not so much) journey from Kansas to Alaska on Wednesday March 27th.  We spent the night in Denver and got together with both Michael Richardson and Linda Dillon.  Some Italian and Ice Cream was had before we settled in and watched a little bit of the Volunteers (an oldie, cheezy but goodie of a Tom Hanks movie - he has a horrible English accent).  I collapsed before the movie was over and retired into my bedroom.

It was a good nights rest for me. But Estelle woke up tired as her legs cramped all night.

It was then off to Billings, MT.  It was a long traverse through Wyoming and Montana but we drove it in approximately 8 hours.  That will be one of our shorter days.  We stayed the night at a delightful Holiday Inn.  One of the things you'll notice about the northern part of the countries and Canada are the presence of Casinos.  In fact, we had one in our hotel in Billings.  Neither Estelle or I gambled but we did have some great food and enjoyed the hot tub (as we did in Denver the night before).  

This morning, we woke up and went to breakfast only to find that Lucky, Estelle's cat had somehow gotten between the cloth lining of the box spring and the box spring itself essentially barricading herself in the interior of the box springs.  I returned after Estelle did so I missed most of the attempted capture.  It was most humorous to return see Estelle trying to finagle the bed to get the cat out.  I am happy to report that the cat was pulled out much to her dismay.  

We got on the road at around 10 am after a stop at Walgreens.  The reason: Walgreens failed to tell me that one of the prescriptions I had picked up was only partially filled (to the tune of 4 out of 30).  This resulted in a necessity to get a new prescription after the Walgreens in Hutchinson graciously returned the entire prescription so I could just pick one up in Billings.  

On our way to Calgary, we passed through some beautiful countryside.  I took the wheel all day today (which was an 8 hour, thirty minute drive).  Estelle will be driving most of tomorrow as we are passing through the Rockies and I have nervous tendencies when it comes to driving in the mountains.  We entered Canada at around 3:15 pm.  It was a great experience at the border.  We didn't get searched or anything which was a relief as both Estelle and I had nightmares about us having to unload the car completely for border patrol.  After answering the typical questions, we were on our way with well wishes from the Canadian boarder agent.

It was another 3 and a half hours to Calgary but again we were treated to wonderful scenery.  I was relieved however to arrive at the Radisson Airport Hotel in Calgary as I was (and am now) quite tired.  We had a very nice Indian flavored dinner with some excellent curry.  I then ventured out to find a cord to update my GPS with as well as a cell phone so that we would have cell phone coverage in Canada as it seemed like a bad idea to drive 2 days without cell phone help.

This adventure ended up lasting more than an hour as I ran into a number of stores which closed almost an hour earlier than they said.  Combine that with a bomb threat at the local mall where I was planning on making my purchasing and you have a hunt which saw me exploring the better part of the part of Calgary near the airport.  I am happy to report that I was able to track down both of my required items.  But it wasn't without a very long journey.

And it paid off, almost.  The phone is all set up and ready to go in case. If you would like to call me, the number is 250-615-9259. Obviously, you'll need to dial the appropriate country code to get connected to Canada.  Otherwise, expect to hear an update every 1-2 days on this blog or via phone (depending on the availability and coordination with Estelle.

Its a 10 hour drive tomorrow (of which I'll probably do 4 hours) so I had better peace out for now.

Love to all and special thoughts to Grandma.  May her recovery go as well as the trip has so far.

Best and love.

Charles

Announcing…

Ava Grace

Born Friday, March 8, 2013 at 6:50am
7 lb 11 oz, 20 inches long

She came via VBAC before her due date and scheduled c-section. 2.5 hours from start to finish! No time for drugs or any alternative delivery. She already has a mind of her own We are all adjusting and recovering well. Her Mom, Dad and big sister Adelynn love her SO much! She’s such a sweet blessing in our lives!

Next Year's Plans

So the way it works in philosophy is that if you apply for a job and you're already teaching, one of the first things the search committee does is they look at where you're teaching now. More prestigious schools mean more attention, naturally. And when you apply to work at your first school, one of the first things that search committee does is to look at where you went to school and who wrote your letters of recommendation; and the more prestigious your letter writers and the more prestigious your degree-granting institution the more attention you'll get. And in order to get into a prestigious degree-granting post-grad institution with prestigious recommenders, one of the first thing the application committee looks at is how prestigious your under-grad institution is. This is the prestige game.

The prestige game is actually really understandable. Schools are motivated to protect and improve on their reputations, because that's what keeps the money rolling in. That means the school's relative prestige (their selectiveness, respected faculty, etc) is a measure of a candidate's own skill: both because schools are conservative about investing their reputation and resources, and because their greater resources are more likely to produce strong candidates for jobs or degrees. The problem I'm facing now is that I have zero prestige. Westminster isn't known in the field. My strongest recommendation comes from a man I look to as an advisor in life and a role-model but who long ago chose to eschew the research side of philosophy and instead focus on teaching. The small size of our department (two professors) also means that I do not measure up well against other candidates on some of the other standards that can compensate for a low level of prestige, such as breadth of training (in value theory, metaphysics, epistemology, and other important divisions within philosophy) or depth of training (I have not specialized in any particular problem or typical area of philosophy). So of the four schools I chose to apply to,  I've been rejected from UNC Chapel Hill* and the University of Arizona. I have received offers for the MA programs at both the University of Colorado and UNC Charlotte, but neither of these are particularly tempting. Colorado can offer me no funding and so I'd pay up to $25,000 for my MA, and Charlotte can only offer me a little bit of funding but is considerably more expensive to begin with. Plus I would still be facing the prestige game when I left Charlotte, as Charlotte's own prestige level is not able to help me. 

Andrew and Marina playing in the Soyuz Trainer at the Cosmosphere

My conclusion from all this is that taking a year, or more, off is my best option at this point. So next year I'll live in Columbia, MO with Andrew McHugh and Andrew Robertson as one runs his startup and the other takes a year off before med school. I've actually settled on this decision fairly easily for a number of reasons. This gap will help me gain experiences that could compensate in the prestige game, could help me find a more monetarily promising program, and help me figure out where I want to fall in the research/teaching spectrum. This latter thing is related to the prestige game: the best positions for professional philosophers are almost entirely research and zero teaching, while those positions with the lowest prestige are just the opposite. I think I would actually be happier in a teaching position, in part because I think it does a better job of engaging those problems which research positions ostensibly engage with, but I want to have that large expanse of knowledge the research positions engender. So I have to figure out how to find a school that won't be just research but will give me the opportunity to practice engaged or public philosophy instead of the usual "applied ethics"--a half-way house between the more distant work ethicists have traditionally done and the actual mess of a world to which philosophy means to refer to. 

In this meantime, I'll be looking for a job (at a bike shop, at a library, or wherever I can get hired, in that order), take free American Sign Language classes at the Missouri School of the Deaf, and read and write as much as possible to improve my 'canon' for if I decide to apply again. Other possibilities that I still have to consider include trying to get hired at one of the three colleges in Columbia in their disability services offices, getting a substitute teaching certificate, or even teaching English overseas. That third option is the one my international housemates are pulling for, although one reason Columbia is nice is that it puts me close to my friends, but not-too-far from the rest of the family. And if I apply to the University of Missouri, STL, which has a very prestigious MA program with good funding and would be a good fit for the training I do have, I would be able to apply for in-state tuition. In all truthfulness, it's an exciting future.

My belated birthday celebration, before leaving for Boulder

In other news, I've just returned from a trip to Boulder, Colorado with two of my housemates (Andrew and Marina) where we toured the city and I toured the campus and talk to faculty. By far the highlights of the trip were staying with Jeni, mother's best friend who lives in the area, and happening to be in one faculty office for the regularly scheduled "philosophy of distillation and fermentation" group, which meant that I, the faculty member, his wife, another faculty member, and six graduate students sat around and drank beer and talked. Not for that reason alone was he the coolest faculty member I met there; for example, he was also rocking red converse low-tops and bright orange socks. 

A sunny day on campus

The other big news before that that I haven't had much time to share was my trip to North Carolina over my birthday. It was a three day trip, that turned into a four day trip when North Carolina freaked out about snow. What I learned was that (1) the Charlotte airport is pretty nice, even when you have to stay there overnight, (2) US Airways offers generous refunds for missed flights, (3) sitting in a plane stuck on the tarmac is worse than being stuck in the terminal, (4) philosophy conferences are pretty boring, (4) the questions people ask you at a philosophy conference are usually meant as much to point out problems in your paper as they are to point out to everyone else how smart the questioner is, (5) Greenville, NC is a nice town as well, except for the whole monument to their dead Confederate soldiers... and (6) all the airports I've ever been in in North Carolina have had rocking chairs--which are awesome. Despite the hectic twist-and-turns of the whole experience, it was a good weekend!

And the memorial itself. NC was also in bloom

*the funny thing about this one is that I found out about Chapel Hill as a place first, then liked what I saw about the school and how involved it was, and only later realized I had applied to an institution in the top 10 for philosophy in the US.

Hello from the Shooks!

Since we too missed our December post, I have a couple of pictures from Christmas in Minnesota for you.

We cut a tree and decorated it with lights from Goodwill, and bows and ribbons.

We purchased booties for Ember so her feet didn't get packed with snow because she was not about to stay inside:)

The kids all got new red plaid lounge pants.  They actually all fit pretty well too!

Since 2013 has started we are all in our usual places doing our usual things.  Samuel has received acceptance from two colleges.  Concordia in Austin and Columbia in Chicago.  He and Tim plan to visit Columbia in April.  (Samuel has been to Concordia with a friend before)  He continues to enjoy guitar playing and he gets to rock the rafters when there are no piano lessons :)  That was supposed to keep the squirrels out of the attic too....  He will be looking for a job soon to save money for his travels next year.

Erik plans to stay at Tulsa this summer and take a summer class.  He can do research for a professor and that should pretty well pay for the class.  He wants to play Ultimate with the Tulsa club team also.  He had a knee injury but has faithfully done his exercises to get back to the field. He has a couple of new friends that will be there also.   Jackson and he have put their names in the lottery for an apartment next year.   The hope is they would be able to move in this summer.

Tim is in California for the board meetings of MTNA.  They reserved the hotel for him so he is in the Disney hotel which gives mickeymouse cookies and has mickey mouse handles in the shower!  Southwestern has finished the "self study" for its accredidation and waits for the authorities to come check them out now.  He should be able to enjoy spring break now that it is done.

Vicki continues working at the insurance office.  Business has been steady and houses are selling so we are getting calls for home quotes.  New projects include some painting at home, getting rid of stuff that no longer works, and cleaning the weeds out of the garden now that FAFSA and taxes are done:)

To close there are two snow pictures for you.  Official counts in Wichita were 14 and 6 inches.

Here is the driveway and below is our hard work down the Central sidewalk.

Best wishes for spring!