First Day of School

Lish's first day of his new career was today, his first day of school as an offical professor! I am so proud of him! Of course I had to do the classic first day of school picture, even though this time around he isn't the student.

And today was my first official stay-at-home-mom day. I say that because Lish wasn't working full-time before and since Yale came along, he has only had to leave to go to work twice. And it was lovely. I love this little guy. Here are some pictures from when I was playing with him today and then from the walk we went on. It was really more for me, because he just slept the whole time. But how cute and chunky is he?! Seriously. Makes my heart melt!

 

So this all means that we have moved and are finally settling into our new place! We love it here. We really enjoy our condo and the area it's in. Plus, we live close to some of my extended family, and we have other family that stays here quite often so we will get to see them often. I think this place will really work out nicely.

PS. Yale giggled for the first time this morning. He started shaking and making a weird noise and it scared me before I realized what it was. And then I about died from an overdose of cuteness.

Sittin', Waitin', Wishin'

Lish and I have been waiting a lot it seems. Waiting for something or someone to tell us where we should go at the end of the summer. Lish is finishing up his PhD program, yay! He has been working on his dissertation since last summer, and he's making some good progress. He applied for jobs last fall, and we're still waiting to hear back from several schools. (Reminder: he wants to be a professor.)

The application process for becoming a professor is very long. The applicants apply a year before they want to teach. They have to get the curriculum vitae, published papers, letters of recommendation, letter of intent, etc. all together, mail them all off, and then it's completely out of our hands. For months. It's very annoying to not be able to have any control over the situation.

Then the schools start going through their applicants. They narrow them down and call several who they are interested in. After the telephone interview, they narrow it down even more, to three or four candidates. The schools invite these few people to come onto their campus for a campus interview. The campus interview lasts all day, usually. The candidate meets most of the faculty, talks with them, dines with them, and then teaches them. They either teach a class or do a presentation about their dissertation, depending on what the school asks of them.

After the campus interview, the candidates are sent home and told to continue waiting for a few more weeks while they make the decision. The faculty then votes on a candidate, the name gets passed to someone higher up in the college or university for approval, the approval moves back down to the department chair, the department chair then calls the approved candidate, the candidate takes a couple days to decides yay or nay, gets word back to the school, and then the rest of the candidates find out their fate.

Waiting and waiting and waiting...

I'm tired of waiting! I know we don't have much longer to wait until we can finally determine our near future, but my patience is being pushed. We're hoping for some very good news! We shall keep you updated.