Wow

We just caught a student who had posted flyers around the department(!) asking to buy an essay for one of her classes.

Problem is, she hadn't had any takers yet, so hasn't actually committed the crime. Can we "prosecute" her (i.e. kick her out) for planning to cheat? Time will tell.

I think an elaborate sting operation would have been more fun, myself.

Question for my American peeps!

In Australia we don't have "composition" courses at our universities. You, as I understand it, do.

All I really know about these classes is informed by my extensive knowledge of academic blogs, so my understanding might be a little bit biased. (Y'think? Yes. You talking to yourself? Yes.) As far as I know, composition courses are usually taught by adjuncts or TAs in the English department, in many places are compulsory for students from all disciplines, not just literature or language majors, and involve lots of practice in writing academic-style texts. (Please correct any misapprehensions here.)

So I was recently talking to some fellow post-PhD wannabe academics, and we were commiserating about how even the scummiest low-level underpaid adjunct jobs are hard to come by. We need more badly paid teaching positions that are only semi in-our-fields and for which we are overqualified! Yeah! And since these guys are in English, they suggested that we could create sucky jobs for all of us if we could only persuade the university to bring in composition courses. They then talked to their HOD, and they seem interested, and it looks like the English department might be willing to try it in collaboration with linguistics (i.e. me).

My questions to you are the following:

• Is this a really bad idea?
• Do composition courses work? Do students improve their writing skills through direct instruction in composition more than they would just be writing regularly in their own disciplines over the three year undergraduate period?
• Assuming that there is no way in hell we would be able to make these courses compulsory, how could we avoid turning them into English-for-second-language-learners classes? (We have a large non-native English speaking population here, and for obvious reasons, composition courses are likely to appeal to them more than they would to the average student).
• The English department people are considering trying to attract public servants to these courses too (public servants taking one-off university classes are a lucrative and sought-after market in this city, as their departments happily pay full fees). Do you think it would be possible to create some sort of coherent writing course that would work for both academically-oriented undergraduates and professional public service writing? (Personally, I think it sounds really difficult, but perhaps not impossible, given creative course design).
• If you have taught composition, do you focus on academic writing as a genre, or more generally on constructing coherent, grammatical, well-phrased texts?
• Anything else we should be bearing in mind?

A 11:30pm sort of thought

Of course, if I had been teaching this semester, one advantage would be that I could yell out the window at the first-year students having the world's loudest party across the courtyard from our apartment to "Get off my lawn" "Cut out the noise or when I see you in class next week your asses are going to FAIL."

Bring out the drama llamas. Oh wait, they already did

My department is full of the kind of insanity right now where it would probably be a really bad idea to blog about the specifics. Let's just say that it's the kind of insanity that involves spontaneous resignations, un-resignations, rumours of lawsuits, blackmail, and classes (which start on Tuesday) left in the lurch.

All of this means that I'm quite popular right now. Yesterday I was treated to yet another example of people who can't do the math, this time suggesting that maybe I should give up my new job ($45,000, 28 hours a week, at least 1 year guaranteed, possibility of a further year) in favour of stepping into the breach ($10,000, 40+ hours a week, can only guarantee two months of work). Admittedly the amount of money offered increased dramatically as the conversation wore on, but even so, I am running very fast in the opposite direction.

Oh, and the ironic timing of this all? Due in equal parts to the current hysteria and another situation, our department might actually have been in a situation to advertise a new faculty position. Which, you know, YAY. Except that the university chose yesterday to announce a hiring freeze. Awsumness.

I don't really have a way of ending this post, except to say, HOLY SHIT. And to reiterate how glad I am to have the new job I do, as I otherwise would be bending over backwards to take on some major teaching at a crappy payrate at three days notice.

Random bullets of 'If I don't blog in bullets I probably won't bother at all'

• Geekman's new deodorant has a scent I have christened 'feral citrus'. (If you'd like to hire me for your marketing department, just shoot me an email.)
• Actually, you should probably hire Geekman for your marketing department too. I can't get his marketing slogan for Super Cheap Auto* out of my head: 'More better faster. (Cheaper)'.
• The advantage of there being no part time teaching budget whatsoever this year is that I don't get to have to, you know, like, teach. So I can feel superior to all the poor sods currently stressing about enrollment numbers and syllabi and "learning management systems" and best practice and shit. (Plus, it means I'm available for your marketing department. Feral citrus: remember.)
• Also, I don't need to teach because I totally have other options. Like, four of them. And they each pay quite a lot a pittance that is slightly higher than what teaching would have. And only one is boring and unrelated to linguistics.
• Totally not at all even a little bit connected to that last point: I have finally worked out why, while I was editing a collected papers volume last year for the last four fucking years, senior academics would chide me and tell me it wasn't so hard really and I must be doing something wrong. It's because said senior academics, when they "edit" a volume do so by hiring someone like me to actually do the, you know, EDITING. And formatting. And hassling of contributors. It turns out it IS quite easy to edit a volume if all it involves is managing research assistants and the occasional phone call to the publisher.
• I can't even pronounce 'Obamabilia'.

• Hmmm... what else? It rained a little bit today. And Geekman and I took the afternoon off to eat doughnuts, drink coffee, and do a jigsaw puzzle.**
• The End.

___________

* A company name that I swear we did not make up even though it totally sounds like we did.

** Which is not a euphemism, but given the context, it sounds as though it should be.

I'm not sure if this is more "boy who cried wolf" or "lecturer (me) whose evilness comes back to haunt her"

I was just talking to a colleague and she mentioned a student essay that was just handed in. This might not sound so weird to those of a Northern Hemisphere persuasion, but down here semester finished in OCTOBER and now it's mid summer and Christmas and all.

My colleague mentioned the student's name—let's call him Stu—and I was all, "Oh god, that Stu. I had him last semester and I have never seen a bigger pile of lazy, excuse-manufacturing, plagiarising shit."

Colleague merely raises her eyebrows, so I take that as a cue to keep whining. "He didn't show up until three weeks into the course. Was late to every class. Didn't hand in half the assignments. What he did hand in was 100% off-topic or plagiarised or both. Had a medical certificate for everything: 'Stu cannot sit exams. It makes his eyes hurt. Please find alternative assessment.' 'Stu cannot wipe his ass as he has extremely short arms. Please make sure ass-wiping is not a necessary skill in this course.'"

"So anyway," I continue. "I hope he had a REALLY good excuse for handing in your essay two months after classes ended."

"Well..." begins Colleague, "He did spend the last few weeks of semester in hospital for open-heart surgery. And he has had a lot of complications during his recovery. He said his heart problem has been an issue all year and that he's missed a lot of class and work due to it. I thought it was only fair to make allowances."

In case you're really stuck for entertainment

I just imported a whole heap of stuff I wrote in 2007 into this blog. They were teaching-related posts I put on another, more anonymous blog at the time, and some of you probably read them over there.

If you didn't, and you're stuck for something to read, you'll find them now posted here under the label "teaching", and on dates ranging from July to November 2007.

For some mysterious reason, I am angry all the time lately

Actual conversation:

Person from the Research Office: "Hello, I'm calling about your application for a teaching innovation grant."

Me: "Hi. Yes, thanks, I received your letter saying I was unsuccessful."

PRO: "Well I wanted to follow up on this. Basically we thought your proposal was a great idea and really important. I think you should go ahead and do it anyway!"

Me: "Without funding?"

PRO: "That's right."

Me: "Well, you see, I'm not actually employed to teach the course in question. The grant application was a joint proposal between me and the guy who IS teaching it. He was willing to let me develop the materials I mentioned, paying me from the funds we applied for."

PRO: "But, you know, it's so important to have interactive online materials for modern courses. And it sounded like yours would have been very effective."

Me: "I agree. That's why we APPLIED FOR THE GRANT."

PRO: "So, you should contact one of our Educational Designers. They might be able to give you the technological assistance you require to develop those materials."

Me: "I don't require technological assistance. I require to be paid some money. So that I can afford my rent. And not have to spend all day diagramming sentences for Microsoft.* [Okay, those last two sentences might have just happened in my head. Not in the actual conversation.]"

PRO: "Your plan was to develop, um, a class blog, right? And wiki?"

Me: "No. Not a blog. The main materials would have been interactive online environments where the students could play around with some real language data, which we were going to digitise from simplified versions of people's fieldwork. There would be built in hints and guidance for exploring it, and relating it to the readings and lectures. [Thinking: if you had actually READ my grant proposal, you would have known this.] We were going to set up a wiki alongside this, so that the students could collaborate on their analyses."

PRO: "Right. A wiki! Yes, wikis are great! So, how about you contact the educational designer I mentioned? She'll show you how to set up a class wiki. It's very easy to do, so you probably didn't need all that funding you applied for anyway."

Me: "I'm hanging up now. Goodbye." [Okay, that last line was just in my head too. Instead I politely re-explained why I wouldn't be pursuing this project (BECAUSE I DO NOT HAVE A JOB HERE. IT IS NOT MY COURSE) and eventually he went away.]

______________

* Looks like this might actually be my new money earner. Big. woo. hoo.

New policy

I think students who can't calculate their own grades should fail the course.

I'm not talking about a small flaw in addition here, but a complete inability to comprehend the way the grades add up, leading to a full-scale email war.

Dear StyleyGeek,

I see I got 73 on my final essay. Why is my mark for the course only 68?

Stu Dent.

Dear Stu Dent,

As you will see from the syllabus on the website, handed out in the first week of class, the distribution of marks are as follows:

Assignment 1: 10 marks
Assignment 2: 15 marks
Essay: 15 marks
Weekly homework: 10 marks
Final exam: 50 marks.

Your marks were as follows: [details redacted to protect the clueless]

Therefore your final mark (add these all up) comes to 68%.

Regards,
StyleyGeek

Dear StyleyGeek,

I thought you said the essay could count for the whole mark of the course?

Stu.

Dear Stu,

No, this is not the case. What you may be confusing this with is the policy about the final exam. If a student submits all work on time, AND the final exam mark, as a percentage, is higher than the marks of all the work added together, then the FINAL EXAM MARK stands as the final mark. This is also explained in the syllabus, along with some examples of possible scenarios. Your final exam mark was only 58% (29 out of 50). Therefore it is lower than your total mark of 68% and this policy does not apply to you.

StyleyGeek.

Dear StyleyGeek,

So why don't I get 73%?

Stu Dent.

God, I wish course transcripts had an option where the lecturer could just enter in the grade column: EPIC FAIL.

Wow

So the teaching period finished four weeks ago. Over last three weeks, the students had their final exams, and in upper-level courses, final projects and essays were due. Last week and this week everyone was frantically marking marking marking until—phew—it's done.

Then last night, an hour before final grades were due, one prof in our department emailed all faculty:

Dear all,

In my [undergraduate] course on [X] this semester, I was glad to find the [20] students wrote excellent final essays on interesting topics. I attach scanned copies of them all, as I'm sure you will find them worth the read.

Regards,
Prof. Optimistic.

I wish I lived in his universe, where, after marking all the final essays for your own course, you are eager and excited to read everyone else's as well.

I rest my case

A small group of us who are casual lecturers (adjuncts in American terminology) recently received a grant from the university to conduct a survey of early career lecturers across campus, to find out what conditions and resources are like, and what sorts of needs there is for training and support.

One of our main hypotheses was that there are a lot more casual lecturers than the university realises, and that they tend to be teaching bigger courses with worse support and fewer resources than is commonly thought to be the case. We suspected that casual employees fall between the cracks because they are often not around when it comes to departmental reviews; they don't tend to show up in official publications like the university handbook (usually the person the casual lecturer is filling in for is listed as the course convener even when on leave), or in official university statistics.

So we created our survey. It got ethics clearance. We sent it to the university's official survey-putting-up technical people, along with instructions about who we are trying to survey and why.

The survey went live yesterday.

Today I find that—guess what?—surveys by default aren't open to casual employees, and the technical people didn't think of changing this option.

Casual lecturers trying to fill out a survey about whether or not the university ignores them get a pretty little red error message: access denied. Because they're only casuals.

We're so funky and innovative! Um. Except when we are wedded to traditional approaches instead.

Yesterday, as part of a larger event at university, we had a sort of teaching round-table, which was kind of like speed-dating, where people got into groups of three and shared something innovative they'd done in the classroom, then swapped groups and kept doing it until time ran out.

Some funky experiments I heard about (I realise some of these aren't exactly new, but they aren't things I knew were happening at our university, either):

• peer evaluation
• self assessment on an honesty system (which of the required tasks did you complete, how much effort did you put in?)
• research projects in an undergraduate class that led to multiple student-as-first-author publications in top quality journals
• courses with mixed participants from as disparate fields as engineering, literature, geography, mathematics, fine arts, and physics, where students came up with research questions that could be addressed by all of these disciplines from different perspectives.
• a course that wasn't. They had one meeting on the first day which paired each student with a researcher (usually a non-teaching academic) and a topic relevant to that researcher's work and the student's interests. The student, using the researcher as a mentor, then had the rest of the semester to put together a conference-style paper, which was shared in a final meeting at the end of the course. This was in a technologies course, and the incentive to do well at the final "conference" was that big-name people from Google and various other high-profile companies attended to hear what the students came up with.
• free choice of final projects, with the exception that students could not do an essay, exam or traditional presentation. One of the students wrote a full-length musical and recorded his friends performing it; another produced a beautifully illustrated children's book; one created a manga comic with totally professional quality drawings; etc. Admittedly this was for a course where all of these responses to the material totally made sense.
• total democracy, where students choose meeting times and lengths, assessment types, topics to cover, and where they run the meetings and the class website. This one strikes me as really really risky, but it was done with a post-graduate group in a professional degree, all of whom had strong reasons to make it work. What really blew me away was an email exchange the lecturer showed us. The first email was from a student complaining about group work and how one member of the group wasn't pulling his weight. The reply explained the pedagogical reasons for group work, suggested some strategies for persuading the group member to pull his socks up, and reminded the student that the grading system would allow them to distribute the marks fairly within the groups. The killer: this reply was from a fellow student. The lecturer also noted that a couple of times he got to class very late, to find the students had gotten started, made some real progress, and hardly needed him there at all.

I was pretty excited by some of these ideas (until I remembered that my main teaching context is classes of 120+ unmotivated first-years, with no funding for extra resources or time to develop new strategies or for one-on-one interaction.)

One of the other sessions during this event was about how to create more time in the classroom to trial new ways of learning. The main suggestion was to move more of what we are currently doing online. (Don't get me started about how this doesn't actually GAIN ANYONE more time (since lecturers have to put in more hours to create the online content, and students have to put in more hours to make use of it)).

So then at the end of the event, people were talking about how interesting and useful it had been to hear about everyone's innovations. Then there was general lamenting that we don't have time to meet and discuss this stuff more often.

"Why don't we apply the solutions we were hearing about this morning?" I suggested. "If we don't have time to actually meet and discuss teaching, let's do it online. Even a simple discussion board could be used to swap suggestions for innovative teaching strategies."

Want to guess what responses I got?

"That's easy for people like you to say. You're the Web2.0 generation. We don't do that sort of thing."

"I guess maybe you young enthusiastic teachers have time to look at discussion boards. Me, I'm lucky if I get to read all my email."

"The whole POINT of today is the face-to-face meeting. You can't have social interaction in a virtual space."

So instead it was concluded that, too bad, we just can't do regular discussions about our teaching. No one has time to meet in person, and other options are impractical. Oh well, how sad.

I'm so helpful

I just directed a student to a grant he can probably get for a project he is doing in his spare time. $10,000 for him, if all goes according to plan.

Is it wrong to feel jealous of a student?

On the other hand, I persuaded him he would need to hire a linguistics consultant.

(Is it wrong to muscle in on a student's project?)

Also, heavy metal Mongolian throat singing rocks.

How do you teach students to generalise?

A plea for help here. I have a student who has been finding the class difficult all semester. I find myself wanting to say, when describing her problem, "She really understands the material. She isn't struggling with the concepts when we discuss them. But she can't apply them to new data. She finds it hard to do her own analysis."

Now, if someone said that to me, I'd reply that I don't think a student really DOES understand the material unless he/she can apply the concepts to new data. But in this case I would have to disagree with my hypothetical self. My student comes up with clever, on-topic insights in class. She can explain a concept in her own words. She can even come up with original examples of a concept.

I've become more and more convinced that there's a general skill missing. And I'm starting to think the skill she is struggling with is generalisation from specific instances to "types" of instance. There's an assignment I give for homework just before we start the semantics module of the course that asks, "In what ways can the meaning of two words be related?" Underneath in brackets it says, "Hint: if you are stuck, start by considering the following pairs: man–woman; hot–cold; small–big; plant–tree; dog–animal; buy–sell; kill–die".

In her answer, the student basically wrote, "Hot is warmer than cold. Man is male and woman is female. A dog is a type of animal. A tree is a plant. Kill is the cause of die. When you buy something, someone sells it." When in class I pushed her to consider whether some of these pairs are "similar" to others, she looked really blank, and then repeated what she had already written.

So it seems to me that this is not a problem with her understanding of linguistics. And it's not that she just misunderstood this one assignment. This was the clearest example of what it is that she is struggling with, but now I look back on her other work, I think this has been the stumbling block all along. But I don't know how to go about teaching someone to generalise, if it's a skill they haven't naturally picked up. For now, I've referred the student to the Academic Skills and Learning Centre, but any suggestions for work I can do with her on this would be hugely appreciated.

Wow, it's Tuesday already

Oops. Quick round-up:

I taught those guest classes. Unfortunately, Absent-Minded Professor had remembered to tell the class he was going to be away last week, but forgotten to mention he had found a guest lecturer. So on Tuesday only one (equally absent-minded) student was present.

One student.

But plenty of my colleagues. They like to sit in on that class, because it's super-advanced and they think they might learn the secrets of Chomsky's most recent incomprehensible mutterings.

So that was weird. I had some interactive stuff prepared, but I kind of freaked out at the student/colleague imbalance and just lectured instead. Hopefully relatively interestingly.

Then I rounded up the rest of the students' email addresses and let them know that Thursday was NOT cancelled, kthxbai.

My lecture for Thursday was much better prepared because I decided from the outset it was just going to be lecture. Unfortunately the topic for the Thursday class kind of built on the Tuesday lecture, which (remember?) no one* was present for. So it ended up being a blend of rehashing Tuesday and trying to cover the new stuff all at once.

I thought the material was much more clearly presented for Thursday and I worked really hard on making tie-ins to the rest of the course (having finally got around to reading their assigned readings for the previous weeks). Weirdly, though, I had a bit of stage fright, probably due to the fact that this super-advanced class was like a Who's Who of my favourite and smartest students from years gone by. So I think I came across more as nervous conference presenter than in-control lecturer. My colleagues made nice comments about my teaching skills after the Tuesday lecture, but I got the impression they weren't so impressed on the Thursday.

I'm calming myself with the mantra of Everyone has crappy teaching days. Everyone has crappy teaching days. Everyone has crappy— and I'm going to get lots of lovely money at the Happy Adjunct Guest-Lecturing Rate^TM. (If they ever sort out my contract <- standard disclaimer.)

__________

* Well, no one who counts, like students or anything.

StyleyGeek becomes one of THOSE teachers(?)

Next week I am filling in for a colleague who is going off to a conference, so today I sat in on his class to see where he's at in the syllabus and to gauge what the students are like.

And now I have a problem.

See, he's kind of rocking the "absolutely no interaction, talk mainly to the board in a mumble while writing indecipherable squiggles" teaching style. And from what I can tell, it's working for him (for a given value of "working"). He has three students. They are all super-geniuses (I've had them in my classes before), and also super-introverts. I think they like the non-threateningness of this guy's approach. And they seem to be learning despite it (see: super-geniuses). I can tell this from my very non-scientific method of squinting over their shoulders to see what notes they were making. (Smart ones: that's what.)

So my problem is: what do I do next week? Do I try to approximate the "lecture to the board" teaching style? (Without actually facing the board, obviously, since that's just stoopid.) Can I bring myself to do that with a room full (for a given value of "full") of a whole three students?

On the other hand, if I try to interact with them at all, I suspect it's going to come off like an awkward first day of class, where everyone looks at the ground and gets embarrassed. Or they might respond grudgingly, but I still don't think two guest lectures is enough time to get a sparkling enthusiastic atmosphere happening. And I bet they will resent me forever if I try to run the class with exercises and discussion instead of a lecture, as I expect they associate problem-solving tasks with introductory courses and think it beneath them.

What would you do?

Now, why is it that women tend to get worse teaching evals than men?

Overheard in the gym changing room today:

"She is SUCH a good teacher. I'm so lucky to be in her course. You know, she's just so kind and loving and really cares about her students as people. And she never hurts people's feelings and takes her time to get to know you."

If that's not a description of 'good teaching', then I don't know what is. Oh, wait, yes I do. How about: "She's such a good teacher. She makes the subject interesting and relevant, and explains things clearly. And she develops exercises and assignments that really help you learn."

Also? I'd like to hear the first description applied to a man:

"He is SUCH a good teacher. I'm so lucky to be in his course. He's just so kind and loving—"

Nope, wouldn't fly, would it?

Freedom!

The last of our visitors has left. For the past two weeks we have had a constant stream of relatives staying. First my mother, then my parents-in-law, and yesterday and today my father and his new wife. When they finally went, Geekman and I did a little Happy Dance of Freedom (TM) and now our lives can return to normal.

A particular highlight of the past week has been my father-in-law's complete obliviousness to everything going on around him. He has a very stereotypical Swedish name, so for the purposes of this post, I'll refer to him as Lars.

Special mention goes to the following moments:

We are walking through a mall, trying to find a particular type of sieve that my mother-in-law wants and can't find in NZ. After 20 minutes of this, Lars remarks in a puzzled tone, "This looks a little bit like a mall."

All week my mother-in-law has been longing to go to a walk-in aviary that we took her to last time she visited. We decide (within Lars's hearing) to go on Saturday. Saturday comes. We exclaim that the weather is nice, so we can definitely go to the aviary. We get in the car, Lars asks for directions, and we tell him to drive until he sees a sign saying, "[Generic Village Name] Aviary". We turn off at the aviary. Park. Walk across the road, and Lars points and exclaims, "Look! It's an aviary! Shall we go look in there?"

We are in the car and Lars is driving (it's a rental that they hired while they are here, since ours is still dead). Geekman says, "You'll need to turn left soon, so move into the left lane."
"Ja ha," says Lars. Doesn't change lanes.
"The left lane," repeats Geekman. "Change lanes."
"Ja ha."
"Before these lights! You are going to turn left at the lights."
"Oh! LEFT!" says Lars, and turns into the right-hand lane.

It must be nice on Planet Lars this time of year.

But now we are free, and there's going to be a sleeping, healthy eating, and plenty of computer games in our future.

In other news, I am apparently teaching a course to one student this semester. Two-and-a-half hours contact time a week. One-on-one. This struck me as a spectacularly good deal, both for me and the student. In fact, I was so dazzled by the fact that they are paying me around half of last semester's pay in order to teach 1/140th of the class size, that it wasn't until now that it struck me that I don't know HOW to teach a course one-on-one. At least, I don't know how to fill up 2.5 hours a week. He has readings and homework and interactive online exercises. And he presumably will have some questions. But I doubt he has 2.5 hours worth of questions. And did I mention this is one-on-one? One-on-one??? There's nowhere to hide! I don't even know how to start adapting the materials I usually use for this class for one student. I usually have two hours of lecture, and one hour of the students doing exercises or discussions in groups while I wander round and see how they are going. None of that is going to work AT ALL.

Any suggestions?

Doomed squared

...and now I'm in trouble with the higher-ups (Head of School - not a member of our department) for this. Because HE doesn't think we should have been passing everyone. And he's the one who had to sign off on my "amended" results.

I actually agree with him, but can't exactly explain that without making it sound like I'm siding against the senior staff who told me to pass these students. I simply told him I changed the marks on the advice of certain senior colleagues, told him who they were, and to speak to them about it for more information.

And now I'm really really worried they are going to throw me under the metaphorical bus. ("What? She's passing the students who earned a fail? We never told her to do that! No! Not us!")

On the positive side, I got my student evaluations back, and one in particular made me smile. Under "Good aspects of this class" the student wrote, "StyleyGeek is excellent! She is the best teacher I've ever had!" Under "Suggested improvements", they wrote, "Raise her salary!"

Hah, if only they knew.

You may remember me from other films, including "Falling asleep in class" and "Being a total dickhead".

Not the smartest way to start a phone call to your former lecturer:
"Hi, I'm not sure if you remember me, but I'm Joe Bloggs? I took your class last year? I'm the one who plagiarised the essay?"

Not the smartest request to make of her:
"So, I was wanting to appeal against that, but I'm not sure if there's some sort of statute of limitations. Could you find out for me, please? And can you find out what the process of appeal would involve and who I need to contact and when? It's really urgent, so please get back to me by the end of today."

And it's not the smartest time to do it, when she's right in the middle of marking 130 final exams and about to leave for a two week conference.

How can it possibly be urgent when you've waited 10 months before even asking about an appeal? Good thing we DO have a deadline for appeals, and, guess what? It's 30 days after they get their result. (Hah.)

(PS: I am planning to write a post about why I said that people in Tonga are strange, but I just haven't got to it yet.)