Star Trek

WARNING: Potential movie spoiler!!

Enough of my friends have watched it I can now talk about this movie. If you haven't please don't keep reading unless you don't mind having the movie spoiled for you.

I walked out of the movie quite happy. I think it was mostly because I really enjoyed hearing the original theme song in a movie theater. This was the first Star Trek movie I ever saw in a movie theater. I know, I'm pretty pathetic as a Trekkie. But I do have a comm badge pin.

Upon reflection, I think there were aspects of the movie I didn't like but all in all, it was a nice way to spend the evening.

It was an entertaining yarn they spun. I was impressed with how the different actors were able to take up the mannerisms of TOS's original actors and yet still give it enough new flavor to make the characters their own. It was reasonable the way they were able to bring in Leonard Nimoy into this movie. It also provided an interesting context in which Spock and Kirk's friendship developed. There were updates in the technological look of everything- the ship and everything look quite spiffy and more "modern". But they also kept enough of the campy-ness that it still felt like Star Trek (the blob of red matter looked so like a blob of bright red nail polish that I couldn't really take it seriously). Though Kirk doesn't walk around without his shirt every 30 minutes, he is seen in his underwear at least once.

I didn't like the romantic subplot between Spock and Uhura (why would Spock be dating anyone if he isn't in his mating season? Do Vulcans date?), the disappearance of an entire (very important!) world, and the disappearance of TWO parents of important characters from the history of the universe (though it is supposed to be in the future and it is fictitious, i know). Okay, so neither Kirk's dad nor Spock's mom makes many appearances in future episodes, I still think they shouldn't be off'ed like that! I was mildly irritated at the story line in which the future Spock gives the "present-day" Scotty some very useful formulas that Scotty was supposed to have created in the future that would allow for some major advances to their matter transport system. Somehow this seems like they took away some of Scotty's intelligence or something. It would have been cooler for Scotty if he came up with it all by himself rather than having someone give him the answer a head of time and he just works backyards to figure out all the explanations. ALSO, they didn't apply the appropriate signals of red shirt = mark of death. People, regardless of shirt color were dying left right and center!

I have to admit my problems with all these changes (well, except for Scotty getting the formulas from the future-Spock) may just reflect my inability to deal well with change. On the plus side, this means they have just re-opened this franchise because they were able to "rewrite history". Now new adventures and stories can occur.

Academic advice

I got some great advice from a colleague about tenure at academic institutions.
I had always known that from the time of right after graduation to the time of tenure review, one must publish, publish, publish. Conferences are great and all but really, at that point, it is all about publishing in peer review settings. But going to conferences help one get published.

What I didn't know is how important it was to show that one had a tightly focused research agenda. What this means is that everything you do research and publishing wise should be tightly related to one topical area. So, say for example, you are interested in looking at the issue of framing and affects on classroom practice. Well, everything you do for the next few years must be some how related to that, to show that you have a focused research agenda. So, there may be really interesting projects that are not related to your research but you will have to say no to them (or find some way to tie it back into your research agenda).

Typically, it is much easier to adopt the same research direction as your dissertation's- since you already have that base, it is sooo much easier to become a recognized expert in the field that way. Sometimes, one can pick a new research direction, but you will need to do it early on so you have the time to really develop it into a rock solid research agenda and to develop into an expert.

Also, as an academic, the work never stops. Which can lead to lots of workaholism- but I think that depends on how smart one is about working (e.g., quantity is not always quality, and it seems that quantity tends to win out a little more in this field than quality) and on how well one is able to focus (e.g., not agreeing to doing too many things, no matter how exciting or worthy the cause).