You might be wondering what I’ve been up to as this space has been sparsely populated of late. I spent most of March fighting a cold, and then an infection, and then trying to get back on track from all of it. At one point, I actually called my mother and cried “what if I get a hole in my face and no one ever loves me?” Her response, ignoring my terrible sentence construction, was perfectly deadpanned: “Erin, they’re doing wonderful things with plastic surgery these days.”
Thank goodness for moms. In the meantime, I tried to do some research as well as figure out what the plan for the next year (at least) is. As most of you know, I’ll no longer be at Gettysburg in the Fall and I spent much of the year seeking out a new academic position. I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining the faculty, albeit temporarily, at Lafayette College in Easton, PA, next year.
I’m sad to leave Gettysburg, my wonderful colleagues, and some great students. Though this was always the plan, it’s still tough. I ran into a former student the other day and when I asked him how he was, he said, “worse now that I found out you’re leaving.” They’ve already started guilt-tripping me for it.
It was a difficult decision; I turned down a few other enticing offers, but ultimately decided that being on the East Coast was important as a collaborator and I explore some research opportunities in DC and Northern Virginia. The faculty at Lafayette are world-class (including fellow Boulder grad and family economics guru, Susan Averett), and I’m hoping that my time there will yield some fruitful collaboration. In addition, I’ve agreed to help UNICEF with the early stages of a data collection project on services for victims of interpersonal violence and for juvenile offenders in Zimbabwe, a project that gets me all kinds of excited.
I got my first revise and resubmit on a single authored paper (it was really fun to revise my CV to reflect that!). I’ve also been immersed in the finding-new-research-ideas process as well as the finishing-old-ones process, and hope some of that can come to light shortly.
As for this space, I plan on continuing to babble here, and hopefully there will be plenty of exhilarating topics to cover as my research and other projects expand. I’ll try not to harass you with too many moving complaints. Google reader is going away in a few months, which means I need a new way to keep track of all of you I love to read, so if that’s how you’re following here, please do update it.
Thanks for staying tuned!
ERIN K. FLETCHER 