What I do with my summer vacation?

Due to my part-time job as a teacher, I am regularly asked what I do on my summer vacation.  It always amuses me, because I guess people think teachers sleep in, watch TV, and generally lollygag their summers away.  So it's been a while since I posted here, and this seems as good a time as any to answer that question.  What do I do with my summer vacation?

Short answer: I work.  A lot.  I catch up on all the stuff I can't get done during the school year while I'm teaching.  A typical summer includes travel (professional and personal), conferences, lots of writing, and some organizational brainstorming.  Here's my latest summer:

As soon as school let out, my wife and I drove to Grand Canyon and did some filming.  It was a long drive.  We also stopped to pick up a substantial library donation in Arkansas on the way back.

After that trip, I spent most of my time working on my new book, The Quest: Exploring Creation's Hardest Problems.  (Thus, I have not taken much time for blogging.)  I'm really excited about the book, and I can't wait to share it.  I promise you this is not like any creationist book you've ever read.  It will be available to order from Core Academy in about two weeks (yes, I've been THAT busy).

We upgraded our computer systems this summer also, getting rid of some of our computational dinosaurs to make room for much more powerful models.  This will really improve all of our activities at Core Academy.

I also spent a week visiting family, and I popped in to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to see a cast of the australopith skeleton Kadanuumuu.  It was off exhibit, though, so that was a bummer.  I did get to see their new reconstruction of the Lucy though.  She's very short.

While visiting my parents, I discovered by accident that the small town I grew up in has a published fossil report.  Apparently, specimens of calamites were discovered back in the 1930s.  That was kind of shocking to me, since I've never seen a rock outcrop there.  So we drove around one afternoon trying to find the recorded fossil sites, but we didn't see anything.  If they were ever there, they're probably overgrown by now.

I also spent some time strategic planning for Core Academy.  I'll be announcing some pretty cool things in the very near future, so watch for that.  We'll also be debuting a new website very shortly.

Now I have three weeks before school starts.  With The Quest finished, I'm already starting to play around with my next book, which I've been working on irregularly for some time.  The subject is human origins, and I do not have an ETA on that one.  Like The Quest, though, I promise this will be a creationist book like you've never read or seen before.

I'll be speaking at Summit in Colorado on July 26, and then I'll be at Origins 2018 and the International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh the last week of July.  I've got a few papers there, and I'll be on a panel discussion about created kinds.

I've also got a bunch of videos to edit, and that starts Monday (the day this post will be published).  With these new computers, I'm looking forward to getting a lot of work done a whole lot faster.

Somewhere in these next three weeks, I have to clean up the science classroom in the Core Academy building and plan my classes for the fall.  No problem.

And that's a typical summer for me.  Steady work, travel, and speaking.  No Disney World trips or lounging on the beach, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.  I'm really looking forward to The Quest and to the other new things coming from Core Academy.  This is an exciting time!  Stay tuned!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com. If you enjoyed this article, please consider a contribution to Core Academy of Science. Thank you.