MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1983 - Mississippi Years

Mississippi State University (continued)

Our teaching load at MS State was only 3 classes versus the 4 we had always taught before. However, the classes were larger and we usually had a graduate course in the mix.

We taught one or two classes during the summer session for the first couple years, then decided it just wasn’t worth the time and effort, beside summer pay was much lower.

It was a nice living and working environment. We each had ongoing 9-month contracts (August 15 to May 15) of which, if you subtract out vacations at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Spring Break, we worked about 8 months.

Workwise things went along rather smoothly for the first six years. We did a number of things as a Computer Science faculty group. One of the fun things was our Friday lunch group known as F3 (Friday Faculty Feast) where a group from the department would go off campus to one of restaurants in town for Friday lunch. Which for many of us meant a glass of wine as well, this was particularly important if there was a monthly department meeting later in the afternoon. If we didn’t have a Friday afternoon class some of us simply went home and took a nap. During this time period both Nancy and I were granted tenure and the following year Nancy was promoted to Associate Professor. I also decided to apply for promotion to a full Professorship. That didn’t turn out too well, but that’s another story.