What next?

Everyone keeps asking me what I'm going to do with all my free time now that the dissertation is handed in. So here's a brief run-down:

1. Write final exam for my classes
2. Mark 60 essays
3. Mark 60 assignments
4. Prepare readings for next week's tutorials
5. Prepare lectures for the next four classes
6. Prepare activities for the final two tutorials
7. Talk my failing students down off their metaphorical (I hope!) cliffs
8. Take the car in to have some repairs done
9. Clean the house to get it ready for the real estate company to take photos so they can start selling it
10. Re-pot my plants
11. Go to the gym
12. Revise the paper I got the revise-and-resubmit on a few weeks ago
13. Work on a grant proposal
14. Try to turn my recent conference paper into something submittable
15. Contact our local publishing house to see if they can give me some editing work to tide me over until February, when classes start again
16. Book a trip to use up all my air miles before they expire in December
    

So yeah, like everyone keeps telling me: I won't know what to do with myself now that it's all over!

I submitted my dissertation and all I got is this lousy keyring

Well okay, and an awesome party and a card signed by everyone in the department that said such sweet things that it made me cry, and a potted native iris that is supposedly unkillable even by my standards (drought AND snow resistant). And lots of offers of work for the next couple of years.

But back to the keyring. It turns out that at the official appointment at the research office, what happens is that you hand over the document that represents the past three years of your life, and they hand over... [insert suspenseful music here]... a university keyring. Fair exchange, no?

I wonder if I have to give it back if I fail?


(PS: Anyone with eyesight good enough to read my name in the first photo should come be my friend on Facebook).

I heart my supervisor

I arrived in at university yesterday to find my supervisor had been leaving messages all over the place because she "urgently" wanted to see me. You can imagine the sort of dread that accompanied that discovery, as I imagined all sorts of things that could have come up to delay me submitting my thesis.

But you know what she wanted to see me about? Two questions:

1. Should she buy groceries for dinner for Friday night, or would she and I be too busy celebrating for her to go home and eat?

2. Did I have enough drinking buddies already, or should she invite some more people to join us?

Non sequitur (isn't that the definition of a blog?)

So remember how it's all spring and shit? (Yeah, I know; that counts as gloating when such a large proportion of my readers are from the Northern Hemisphere.)

ANYWAY.

Every morning on my way to university I cycle through fields and fields of wildflowers (a.k.a. weeds). And it makes me happy.



I think the parrots like it too.

Two things that are messed up

1. Our department administrator went on stress leave recently. They had to hire three people to replace her. (And they wonder why she needed stress leave.)

2. My office mate has taken a six month leave from her PhD program. She still comes in early every morning and works hard on her thesis until late at night. So I asked her why she took the leave if she isn't actually, well, taking it. She said she needed six months "off" to get caught up with all the work she is behind on.

Today's little hurdle

One of the problems with getting my thesis bound was that they don't do hard binding anywhere in this city (despite it being the nation's capital and all). So it turned out that I'd need to send the dissertation to Sydney, and allow a few weeks for binding. I didn't really have time for this, and the university allows soft or hard binding for examination copies anyway, so I decided on soft binding.

The next problem was that no one else in my department seems to have ever done this, which meant that no one knew things like what sort of binding is usually used, what should go on the front cover, etc. Everyone reassured me, though, that the printery handles plenty of these things, and are really helpful, and they'll be able to tell me what is usual.

I took my thesis in to be bound today.

"Hi!" I said. "I have six copies of a dissertation here that I would like to have soft-bound, please."

"What sort of binding do you want?" asked the receptionist.

"Well, I don't know much about the different types of binding. What do most people get?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Okay... What would you recommend?"

"You can just get it comb-bound."

I looked at the sample she showed me. The plastic comb binding was falling apart and the paper was torn in several places.

"That doesn't look very robust to me," I said. "What are the other options?"

She sighed. "There's spiral binding and tape binding."

Tape binding is what I did for my MA thesis. So I asked for that.

"I don't think we can do tape binding," she said. (Now she tells me.) "We are out of supplies."

"Okay, then. I guess it's spiral binding."

Just then someone from the office next door stuck their head around the door. "We have enough supplies left to do eight tape-bound theses."

So I asked for tape binding after all.

"So just a clear plastic cover then?" She asked.

"Um... actually, I was thinking of having card covers."

"Good," she said. "Plastic looks dreadful." (So why exactly did she suggest it?)

"And I'd like the title and my name on the front, of course."

"Oh!" she said. "Well! We'll have to copy the title page you printed out." This has all the extra wording required by the university, as well as the title and name, so I think it would look kind of weird on the front cover.

"Really?" I asked. "Um, okay."

She filled out a form and started to move away. I asked about colour options for the cover.

"It will have to be white if you want a title on it," she said, which also surprised me. You'd think with new-fangled modern technology they could manage to print on coloured card.

"And when can I pick it up?" I asked.

"When do you need it by?" She replied.

"I'm submitting tomorrow afternoon, but I'd like to pick it up well in advance of that."

"Tomorrow? Really? Well!"

"I called last week and you said you can do same-day binding," I pointed out, with an obvious glance at my watch, which said 9am.

"Well then, I suppose we can manage it," she replied. "Four o'clock today."

And then I went outside and felt like shit.

Fat bastard

Doing his best chicken impression.

Did you hear me go, "ARGH!" from there?

From student essay read today, "Throughout Australia's history, the primary language of this country has been English."

The propaganda is working.

Now for the important question

What colour should my dissertation cover be?

Entitlement

I've read enough academic blogs to know that it's not just me complaining about this, but man! Someone's sense of entitlement is really a little overblown. I helped him out a couple of times and now he expects something from me every single day. He'll spend hours outside my office, waiting for me to turn up, making enough noise that it irritates the people on either side of me.

Or I'll be working hard and suddenly I'll hear this tap tap tap-tap that means he expects me to drop everything to cater to his demands, and isn't leaving until I do. And if I can't help him out for whatever reason, he just hangs around, getting louder and louder until I give in and find some way to get him what he's after.

And in case anyone is curious, I've posted about this particular offender before: here and here.

Why is it

that some people can layer all sorts of clothes on top of each other and it looks funky and fresh, and when I try it, I look like the op-shop bag-lady from hell?

Today is just not going so well

I got blasted today for doing something that at the time, I had never even considered might be problematic. Ever since I realised people were upset, I have felt kind of embarrassed and guilty that I hadn't considered there might be a problem. So I am curious to see whether you agree that I should have done things differently, and if so, what.

The background is that a community group I am the president of (the one Geekman calls Toastgraspers) is always a little desperate for publicity, and has a big problem with membership dwindling towards the end of each year. I have always been told we should do anything to keep up our public profile, including calling the newspaper every time we run an event even slightly newsworthy. I have never done this myself, though.

Yesterday I got an email from a journalist for this city's main newspaper, who wanted to do a two-page feature on our group, so I invited her along to the meeting, along with her photographer. I had the person leading today's meeting introduce them and explain what they were there for.

Anyway, just under half the group were horrified. They didn't want photos taken, didn't want pictures in the paper, didn't want their names or identities used. One in particular made a big fuss afterwards, including two follow-up emails, and said she'd have walked out on the spot if she'd known the visitors were "journalists" (her scare-quotes, not mine!). The person who had introduced them at the start of the meeting is not a native speaker of English, and nor is the person who made the most fuss afterwards, so presumably there were some problems with understanding the introductions. Since this person didn't realise what was going on until after the journalists had left, she now wants them not to use any of the photos they took, since most (all?) would have had her in them somewhere.

Anyway, now I'm feeling guilty and embarrassed, since it really should have occurred to me that people might not want journalists taking pictures and writing about them without them being forewarned. I have passed on the message that photos of this one person in particular should not be used. On the other hand, you couldn't pay for this sort of publicity! It is a great chance to get new members and show people what our club is about. Since we are a group that is open to all-comers and whose meetings are held in a public building, and since it is an organisation that people are generally proud of belonging to, I would have thought there is nothing wrong with it being in the news.

If I had to do it again, I guess I either would decline the journalists' requests to profile our club, or at least get them to wait a week so I could contact people and ask everyone if they were okay with it. I was honestly astounded at the depth of hostility there was to being in this piece, and I feel like, as club president, I let people down. Obviously I'm hoping you will all chime in and say that you would have done the same thing and that everyone is reacting strangely, but if you want to say the opposite, knowing that I am an insensitive freak is probably helpful for my personal development too. Also any suggestions as to how to minimise fallout would be useful (I have already sent out an email of apology to the club).

Well fuck it.

Our property manager just called to say our landlady is selling our house.

Does anyone have a cupboard we can come and live in?

Don't do this (unless you don't like your friends)

Giving an email the subject line: "SURPRISE!!!" is a sure way to make the recipient

(a) almost stick it straight in the spam bin, stopping only when she recognises the sender's name.
(b) get all excited, only to be hugely let down when she reads the rest.


Full text of the email (from my mother, in case we haven't guessed by now):

Hello love,

I just had a wonderful surprise. I was watering my tomatoes and the phone rang and it was my friend Linda, and we had a lovely chat. I wasn't expecting anyone to call, so isn't it great when these things happen? PS: Here's a recipe for lentil casserole [redacted].

Love,
Mum.

And I thought it was a surprise for me. For ME! *sniff*

(Although lentil casserole could be pretty surprising under the right circumstances, I guess.)

Highlights and lowlights

Highlight of the conference:

My paper did not suck. And this was 80% thanks to all your wonderful suggestions, 10% thanks to me pulling an all-nighter the day before, and 10% thanks to the fact that at least half the other papers I went to sounded like they had been scraped together 10 minutes beforehand from the mouldering remnants at the bottom of someone's research barrel, making me look good in comparison.

Lowlight of the conference:

Friday night, 8pm. Due to nerves and last minute paper rewriting, I hadn't really eaten all day. I was tired and overwhelmed. And then I missed the bus back to my hostel. Walked back, 30 minutes, in the rain. Spent the whole walk dreaming about how I would eat a hot dinner and crawl straight into bed.

I reached the hostel, let myself in, and noticed a piece of paper taped to the door of my dorm: Tess, since you didn't pay for tonight yet, we have sold your bed. Since I am not Tess, not even in real life, I ignored the note and walked on in. One of the guys in the room shot me a Look and said, "Read the note on the door."
"Yeah." I replied. "Who's Tess?"
"The note. On the door," he said. "Your bed is gone."
"I'm not Tess," I repeated, baffled. Went over to my bed. There was someone in it.

Turns out the hostel had mixed me up with someone called Tess who hadn't paid. The place was full. My stuff was piled out by reception, which was empty and locked. The phone number on the door reached nothing but a disconnected signal. At 9pm, I realised my chances of finding alternative accommodation for the night were pretty low.

It did take a lot of walking around in the dark, knocking on closed doors and full hotels before I found something. But when I did, they were wonderful. They felt sorry for me, gave me a half-price room all to myself, with an ensuite bathroom, and it included a free pancake breakfast the next morning. And when I went back to the first place the next day and metaphorically kicked the metaphorical shit out of the not-so-metaphorical receptionist, she apologised and gave me a full refund plus compensation.

But it's strange, because if someone had said to me that I could upgrade from the overcrowded, deteriorating hovel that was Annie's Place (bedbugs, spiders and inconvenient location all included at no extra cost), to a friendly, clean, quiet place like Sunny's, have a room to myself, an ensuite bathroom, and free pancakes for breakfast, and that they would pay me to do so, I would have been overjoyed. As it was, this is essentially what happened, but I'm still pissed off about the whole situation.

The bastards.

Still no trousers

But instead, I bring you Adelaide's most photographed object: The Mall's Balls.

Two lists with a complex and unpleasant relationship to each other

Things I can't find but should be able to
My new brown trousers
My black handbag
My pajama pants. Any of them.

This doesn't make sense to me, given that this house only has three non-kitchen cupboards, and I've taken everything out of them and put it back in again twice during tonight's search already.

My day tomorrow
9am Doctor's appointment
10–11am Teach class 1
11–12 Teach class 2
12 Meet with student about his essay
12:30–1:30pm Meeting
2pm Meet with student about her essay
3–4pm Teach class 3
4:30pm Leave for airport
5:40pm Fly to Adelaide for conference

And it looks like I'll have to do it all without trousers or pajama pants.

The weeks of doom are nearly at an end

Two weeks ago I sobbed all over Geekman, brandishing a list of upcoming things I had to do before mid-October, any one of which had the potential to be a horrible disaster. Now I think I'm finally over the hump, and nothing has gone at all wrong yet.

• Finish marking 82 assignments.
• Design the next piece of assessment.
• Pre-prepare two weeks' worth of lectures and tutorials.
• Organise the first round of a competition for an organisation I belong to.
  
• Organise and run a dinner and the semi-finals of this competition: approx 50 attendees.
• Host two sets of house-guests.
• Write conference paper.
• Attend conference.
• Submit dissertation.

Although the final item on that list is kind of a big one, you wouldn't believe how reassuring it feels to have got this far.

Audible gasp

One of the topics I wanted to cover in today's lecture was one that had left an impression on me when I first encountered it in my own undergrad days. There was some data in particular—evidence for the psychological reality of a theoretical construct—that I couldn't remember the details of, but did recall finding compelling and cool and spooky. I wanted to show this to my students today.

It took me a long time to dig up the relevant information, to come up with good illustrative examples, to make the appropriate slides, and to tie it into the rest of my lecture, and in the end, it just didn't seem as cool as I had remembered it being. I nearly left it out, but fortunately did not.

I say fortunately, because when I got to that bit in my lecture, I revealed this piece of data (without any especial emphasis or drama), and from a few of the students came an audible gasp. One of them let out a quiet, "Oh, my god!"

So for the rest of the day I have been remembering what it was like to come across new ideas like this, and compelling evidence for a theory, and to tie it all together for the first time. It gave me goosebumps then, and the reactions of my students gave me goosebumps today.

Advice sought

I'm going to a conference later this week, and haven't really written my paper yet. Too many other things have come up (teaching, visitors, the thesis, more teaching, 82 fricking assignments to mark, sitting in a corner panicking, more teaching). The topic is something from my thesis, but something I've only really touched on a little. I had planned to spend a few weeks doing some extra work to turn it into a better supported idea. If I try to give a paper on it with this little preparation (four days), it will be pretty craptacular.

There's no question of cancelling my attendance at the conference: the plane tickets are paid for and non-refundable ($300), as is the conference fee ($250), and even my accommodation will charge one night's stay if I don't show. So my dilemma is whether it is a potentially worse career move to give a craptacular paper, or to cancel my talk at this late notice when it will be pretty obvious to everyone present that it isn't because I am sick or maimed, but just disorganised.

What would the rest of you do?

Is this really something to be proud of? Or to tell your lecturer?

I ran into one of my students today at a secondhand book fair. She was standing in a corner without any books.

"Haven't you found anything you liked yet?" I asked her.

"Oh no," she replied. "I'm just waiting for my brother. I don't, like, read books or stuff."

Par for the parental visit course, or midlife crisis?

So far on this visit my father has gotten drunk, insulted my friends, spent more money than he can afford, and hidden himself away for hours at a time to make whispered phone calls to his secret girlfriend.

I don't know why everyone expects priests to be paragons of virtue!

Overheard

A young woman sitting on a park bench, talking into her mobile phone, "So I'm taking four weeks off uni... Yeah, I was meant to have two exams this week, but I'm putting them off until next month... No, I'm not sick. I just don't feel like studying. It's like, it's all spring and stuff, so I just want to sit outside and read trashy novels. So I'm going to do the rest of my coursework in the final week of semester instead... Who? No, I haven't told him yet. Well, it's not like I could get a medical certificate or anything, so what's the point?"

I have a sneaking suspicion that the who in the last bit of the conversation referred to her professor. In which case she is probably going to get a bit of a surprise when she does get around to letting him know about her plan.

Bonus Australian wildlife!

One of the nice things about having visitors is it makes you wander around the city more. And then you see things like this:

Echidna, looking snuffly.

Water dragon, looking superior.

The same water dragon, wondering if I was ever going to stop taking photos and leave him/her the hell alone.

Coincidence? Or maybe my car hates my parents.

My parents have visited three times in the past two-and-a-half years. My car has broken down three times in the past two-and-a-half years. Guess when?

This means my parents believe my car to be much less reliable than it really is. ("It breaks down every time you use it!") It also means they intimately associate this city with time spent on the side of the road waiting for the Roadside Assist people.

(Of course, three breakdowns in two-and-a-half years doesn't make my car a winner in the reliability pageant. But yesterday's was pretty minor: the headlight switch stopped working, so the headlights wouldn't turn off. Which is a problem because I didn't realise it until after it had drained the battery, but isn't going to take much money or time to fix.)

Signs that your scrabble partner isn't an experienced player

"What sort of a word is fa?!?" (or re, or qi, or de, or any of the standard 2-letter words).

"What does qat mean? How can you not know? Why would you learn a word without knowing its meaning?"

"That's not a word!"
"It's in the Scrabble dictionary. You can look it up if you like."
[He looks it up.]
"It's in there, but I still don't think it's a word."
"If it's in there, it's a legal play."
"But it's not a word! You're cheating!"

"I can't believe you used that triple letter score! I set that up for ME! You aren't playing fair."

(Yes, my father is visiting this week. Blogging may be light, or it may be whiny. Maybe even both. Are you excited yet?)

Spring is here!

Geekman is just plain weird.

"You're up early, Geekman."

"The religious people woke me up."

"What religious people?"

"All of them. I was lying in bed thinking about religion and it irritated me so much that I had to get up."

******

And, once again looking over my shoulder at some teaching preparation, "What's an unaccusative? It sounds like a parlor scene with a really bad detective. 'I accuse.... the BUTLER! No, I take it back. He didn't do it after all.'"

Geekman does linguistics

Geekman, looking over my shoulder at a worksheet on syntactic relations that asks students to give an example of a complement and an adjunct:

"A complement: 'You're so pretty!' An adjunct: 'You're so adjacent!"

An observation

If you have two friends who also are friends with each other, and one is chronically early (frequently by an hour or so), and one is chronically late (frequently by 3 or 4 hours), you will all spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for each other.

(I love you both, anyway, guys.)

Peeping Tom

And, no, I don't clean my windows very often. Why do you ask?

Polling time

So, there's a student who got 16% on the assignment, but loses 20% in lateness penalties (10 days late at 2 percent per day). Do I give him 16% (many people in my department waive the lateness penalty if the student has failed anyway), 0%, or -4%?

Also

On the post about the haka I should have noted that it is universally respected and feared across Australasia.

Things you don't want to hear your husband say while he is dying your hair

"I'm trying to make it look artistic."

"This will make it more interesting."

"No one looks at your head from both sides at once, anyway, do they?"

Obviously the last post needed more explanation

Rugby and soccer are different. Rugby is closer to American football, but without all the girly padding. There is more mud and glory in rugby. And the game doesn't get interrupted every three seconds by an over-zealous referee.

Plus, rugby players are cuter. Look!

Joe Rokocoko

Doug "get a haircut" Howlett

And my favourite, Tana Umaga. He's so cute that he gets two photos. But then he went and retired, so it's hardly worth watching the World Cup this year. (Except for Rokocoko(kokokokoko), the one at the top. He's worth watching. Not just for cuteness, but because that man can run. And smile. His smile is the best bit.)

The NZ team, the All Blacks, do a Maori war dance before each game, known as the Haka. Other Polynesian cultures have similar traditions, which is why you get Tonga and NZ facing off in the video below.

In my opinion, the haka is the main point of the game. After that and the national anthems, it's all downhill and you might as well give up and go to bed. Unless Rokokoko or Umaga are playing, of course. Which Umaga isn't, because he retired. Did I mention that? I don't think he realised how much his retirement would affect my ability to watch rugby games, otherwise he'd never have gone and done it.

The other thing worth knowing about the haka is that traditionally the All Blacks have always done the Ka Mate (Death) haka. This is very popular, but has slightly cryptic words (very hairy man doing something, up and down and up and down, and something something sun shiny shiny, whatever), unless you know the story behind it, and/or your Maori is better than mine. Two years ago the All Blacks commissioned a new haka, Kapa o Pango (All Blacks), which is pretty cool, and with words that are more clearly relevant (not so much of the hairy), but it upset people because of a throat-cutting gesture at the end. Now they kind of alternate between the two.

The Ka Mate haka can be seen here.
Here's a slightly less usual variant: the leader takes his clothes off :)
Here's a karaoke version (you know you want to).
Kapa o Pango here.

In honour of the Rugby World Cup

Gingerbread men doing the haka! (Warning: don't put the volume too high. Gingerbread men have shrill voices. (Who knew?))


Following youtube links around this video, I found someone had uploaded a NZ vs Tonga faceoff where each team does their own haka. A bit too much focus on the All Blacks, unfortunately: I would like to have seen more of the Tongan one. Still very cool, though.

Being able to read is one of the skills that got us here

If there's one thing worse than a presenter who reads every word of every slide to you, it's one who follows along under the words with the laser pointer as he does so. Ugh!

The geekiness is strong in that one

I went to hear a talk by Jorge Cham of PhD Comics fame today.

If he ever gets sick of cartooning, he'd easily find a niche as stand-up comedian. Unfortunately the sheer scale of Teh Funny meant that the audience was soon conditioned to laugh at the end of each sentence. Which was awkward when Jorge transitioned to talking about PhD student suicide statistics.

Congratulations should go to whoever briefed him beforehand on Australian terminology. I was very impressed at the smoothness with which he replaced the term "ramen" with "two-minute noodles." The jokes about "quals" fell a little flat, though. (Huh? Exams? We aren't undergraduates! We don't DO exams.)

As for the free food and drinks, it was very impressive. I couldn't get near the food table for sheer swarminess of large engineering students, but there were so many drinks that one could, theoretically, have stuffed a few bottles of beer into one's bag to take home and drink later. Not that one would, of course. (Unless the catering was close to packing up and there were still some left. But even then, one wouldn't admit to it on the internet.)

Styleygeek understands statistics

Me to Geekman: "I'm always slightly concerned when the grades for an assignment form a perfect bell-curve."

Geekman: "Why?"

Me: "Because they never have before! (So maybe "always" wasn't the right word.) And it makes me worry I have set an assignment that tests intelligence rather than what they should have been learning."

Geekman, cryptically: "A convolution of two Gaussians is still Gaussian."

Me: "Two? What's the other one?"

Geekman: "I mean, if they are normally distributed for intelligence, and for hard-workingness, then you will still get a normal distribution."

Me: "But I don't think their success or failure in the assignment should depend on intelligence and hard-workingness."

Geekman: "What should it depend on?"

Me: "Whether or not they learned the material. And it's not hard, so they bloody well should have. Which means they should all get 100%... except for the ones who didn't come to class. They should get zero."

Geekman: "And then there's the morons. There will always be some morons."

Me: "Okay, so I want a trinominal distribution. A lump of absentees together near the bottom; a blob of morons in the middle; and everyone else together at the top. Do you think I can scale for that?"

(Posted here instead of at the secret hiding place, because I've run out of non-teaching-related material for here.)

Why I worried about my students today

Almost all 81 of my students have had a collective brainfart and decided that worried cannot be a verb.

In part of the assignment they have just had, they had to identify errors in simple sentences and explain (using correct grammatical terminology) what it is that makes these usages wrong. Often there were several mistakes per sentence.

In the sentence: "Him worried about that my problems", they correctly replaced him with he and that my with that OR my, and explained why these were wrong. Then almost 100% of them also corrected worried to is worried or was worried, explaining that it is not a verb.

These are (supposedly) native speakers of English.

As far as I'm aware, there aren't prescriptive grammarians going around telling people that he worried is incorrect, and the few non-native speakers I have did not "correct" it. So what's going on?

Birdwatching is so educational

"The rosellas are pecking each other! It's the big one. He's picking on the littler one. He's pecking her all over, poor thing. I'm going to go out there and stop him. Why would he be pecking her like that for no reason? Oh... wait. It's THAT sort of pecking... I guess there was a reason after all."

How long before we have baby parrotlets, do you think?

More observations from the assignment

It's so disappointing when a student misinterprets the instructions for an assignment, and by doing so sets themselves a task that I would never assign, is boring as hell, and will probably put them off linguistics for life.

And then I have to try and work out how to mark it.

And again!

The student I mentioned below wasn't the only one who thinks grammar is a pain.

From another assignment:

"English grammatical inflection poses a particular hazard to young children."

I guess this student finds grammar a little painful

Marking assignments today, I came across this little gem:

"Played is the verb play with the past tense affliction."

Question for the Australians

Who spray-paints roadkill green and why?

Up in the mountains last weekend we saw the usual mounds of dead kangaroos, wombats, possums, and so on on the side of the road in the early mornings. Then when I passed them again that evening, they each had a lime-green stripe spray-painted across them.

Theories various Australians have suggested, in order of decreasing plausibility:

• The wildlife rangers use the paint to mark that they have checked the pouches for joeys.
• Someone is counting them for some statistical reason, and they mark them as they go so they won't end up counting anything twice.
• It's the newest trend in graffiti: using dead animals as your canvas.
• They are being assimilated by aliens, one green stripe at a time.

What surprises me is that people don't know. If someone were decorating my roadkill, I'd be wanting an explanation.

I'm such an overachiever

Remember how I set myself a goal of skipping one meeting a week?

Since then, I have missed every single meeting I could possibly have attended. That's a total saving of around 12 hours.

I need to set goals like that more often.

The Apathetic Eight have an adventure!

The snow trip was a fucking nightmare. A very pretty fucking nightmare. Snow white and the fucking nightmare.


The main problem was that someone needed to explain to the trip leader that an intermediate-to-advanced trip does not automatically become a beginners' trip just because you say to beginners, "Yeah, it's for all levels! You'll be fine! If you can't ski it, you can just walk for a bit."

Walking 18 km (11 miles) uphill on a solid sheet of ice (yeah, the weather was a little bit to blame as well) while carrying skis and poles is no fucking fun at all.

Something else I learned: You get what you pay for. Specifically, if you pay $10 to hire "everything you need for a weekend of snow camping and skiing", what-you-pay-for includes skis that are 20cm too long (they were out of my size, but "she'll be right, mate!"), a broken ski boot, and a sleeping bag that absolutely, no matter what they say, is not rated for minus degree temperatures (even when inside it you are wearing three pairs of socks, thermals, trackpants, pajama pants, jeans, a t-shirt, a long-sleeved t-shirt, a polar fleece, a pajama top, a thick ski jacket, two hats, a scarf and two pairs of gloves).

A catalogue of my (thankfully minor) injuries:

• A slight lack of skin down one arm (when you are sliding rapidly on your side down a hill towards a cliff, you start to really hope that enough skin will attach to the ice that it will provide a little bit of friction).
• A chunk missing from the back of one foot (see broken ski boot, above).
• A pulled leg muscle (from doing the splits one of the two times I did attempt to use the skis)
• Bruises all down one leg (that sliding rapidly down a hill thing)
• Cuts all over both hands (a falling forward onto ice thing)

Most of these happened at the start of the first day's six-hour "walk". (I prefer to refer to it as a "valiant uphill struggle against wind and ice, heroically ignoring searing pain and the fact that I couldn't lift my right leg more than 5cm in the air.")

At least there were wombats.

The foot meme, now with bonus wombat

This next photo is of my very first wombat. It's weird that I have been in Australia for more than three years and not seen a wombat. But that just made it all the more exciting. Even if it did spend the first five minutes of our encounter playing the "If I can't see you, you can't see me" game.


Eventually it came out to say hello, but I was a little bit nervous, in case it charged me. Which made the Australians laugh (a lot). But these things are big (around 3 feet long and 40 kg/90 pounds). And see the section on their behaviour in Wikipedia (which page incidentally has the best photo captions ever (Common wombat in the snow and A Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat sniffing).


Actually, pretty much every possible title gets better if you stick the word wombat in it.
Wombats on a Plane.
Brave New Wombat.
Wombats of the Caribbean.
The Wombats of Wrath.
The Wombat in the Rye.
The Lord of the Rings in all three incarnations:
The Fellowship of the Wombats, The Two Wombats, Return of the Wombats.
Wombats in Black.
The Wombat Ultimatum.

I could go on. But (you'll be glad to hear) I won't.

A good story gets even better

It turns out they ARE twins.

Why maths should be a prerequisite for ALL university classes

(Disclaimer: I know that this complaint does, itself, conform to a certain stereotype, and that you've all heard it before. But I still can't help but marvel. If students themselves weren't such stereotypes, we wouldn't have to be them either.)

So the first major assignment for my course was due on Monday. Eighty students. Approximately 10 pages each. They will each take me 20 minutes to mark, minimum.

Forty-eight hours later I got my first enquiry as to whether I had marked the assignments yet. Would I be returning them today?

That explains the weird conversations

There's a tall blond guy who sits most days in the linguistics library and studies. He always seems to be there, no matter what time of day. Now and then I see him in the tearoom too, making himself a drink. Sometimes I try to have a brief chat, though this seems to fluster him a little. Simple observations like, "You were working late last night," or questions like "Have you recovered from that cold you had last week?" often receive confused replies.

He seems very industrious: the student I wished I'd been as an undergraduate, doing extra readings, writing up his notes, reading multiple perspectives on each topic, preparing assiduously for tutorials. He arrives before me in the morning and leaves later at night.

Today I walked into the tearoom and did a double take. He was in there. Standing next to himself.

It turns out there are two of them, similar enough to pass for twins. Suddenly all is clear. (And he's only half as industrious as I had thought.)

Some mysteries solved

I guess the possum in our roof wasn't dead; just busy.

And it also explains where the leftover bird seed is going (look at that nose!)

The market worth of a PhD

Half an Acre had a post a few days ago about the financial hardships of grad student life (thanks to Ancrene for reminding me of that just before I wrote this). Anyway, I've just realised how much better things won't get when I graduate:

I just discovered that the payscale for casual and sessional lecturing and tutoring here goes up for people with a PhD by a whole—wait-for-it—$5 an hour.

I guess it adds up fairly quickly if you are doing a lot of hours.

I really hope it adds up quickly.

And I hope I can get a lot of hours.

Delusions of adequacy. (I am lacking them.)

I now have all my feedback on the dissertation back from my committee members. The last lot came in this morning. And I am concerned.

None of them have given me much at all beyond formatting and editing suggestions (pointing out typos, tables needing fixing, references that are in the wrong format, and the occasional ambiguously worded sentence). There is a handful of comments that are a little more substantive, but nothing I can't fix in five minutes (1 x "This argument unnecessary and can be left out"; 2 x "more detailed glossing needed on these foreign language examples"; 1 x "add in another paragraph of background to this section").

I was expecting many more, and more major, revisions. And no matter how often I tell myself (or other students tell me) that if my committee thought it were necessary, they would have told me so, I can't suppress the anxious goblins of paranoia that whisper:

"Maybe they just didn't read it thoroughly."
"Maybe they think fixing it would be more work than it's worth."
"Maybe it's unfixable, so they don't even know where to begin."
"Maybe they all assume that [main supervisor] will address the substantive problems, and perhaps she thought the others would bring a fresh perspective."
"Maybe they just don't care."

Finally I caved in and wrote the following email to the committee member who provided the least feedback (seven small points), and who I was expecting to get the most revisions from, since he is one of the world experts in a topic very closely related to mine.

Dear [Committee Member],

Thank you very much for the feedback that you sent this morning. I have to say, though, I'm a little surprised that you suggest so few revisions (you and the others too, actually). I guess I should assume that means you are generally happy with the content and structure and think it will pass. (Alternatively, of course, it could mean that you think the whole thing is an unfixable disaster, but I'm enough of an optimist to hope it's the former explanation!)

Anyway, I'll get on to making those changes in the next day or two.

Regards,
StyleyGeek.

And this is the reply I got:

Hi,

Glad to hear the others didn't have many revisions either.

Cheers,
[Committee Member]

Did he just not hear the barely disguised plea for reassurance? Or did he think I was fishing for compliments and deliberately failed to come through?

I don't need compliments. I just need someone to come out and say unambiguously that the dissertation is adequate. Just a little bit adequate. The PhD process has made me too insecure to read between the lines.

A difficult decision

The university rock climbing club I belong to is offering three days of skiing for the cost of petrol to get there + national park entry fee (total = $50) + super cheap hire of club gear ($10 total for full ski equipment, snow camping gear, etc).

It would be morally wrong not to go, right?

But, snow camping? I have a nasty suspicion that this is, like, camping. But worse (see: in the snow). Won't I get cold? I'm not sure I do so well without regular hot showers.

And backcountry skiing? Won't I fall off a cliff and die?

So inferior that I beat him by 42 points

Now that I've been playing so much online Scrabble, I'm finally getting good enough to beat Geekman. After today's game, he sighed and said, "Next time we're going to play challenge rules. I'm sick of losing."

I gave him an incredulous look.

"I am! It's happened twice now!"

"So now you know how I've felt all these years!"

"That's different," he grumbled. "You're inferior."

Bliss is a super-cheap ski trip. Also:

Perfect weather, powdery snow, 11°C (52 F) temperatures



Empty slopes



And more trails than I can ski in a day (purple are the runs I got through).


(Images stolen from other people's shots and the ski-field's own website, but perfectly representative of the conditions yesterday.)

How I spend my time: the conclusion, with pretty pictures

(The red represents work, the yellow is fun activities, and the blue is routine tasks.)

In total, I spent 35 hours and 40 minutes on work (teaching and dissertation) last week, just over 32 hours on fun, and 28 hours 40 minutes on routine tasks like eating, cooking, chores, etc.


Last week was atypical in a few minor respects: two people I know had parties (a house warming and a birthday) and someone came over for dinner. Usually we do nowhere near that much socialising. Also, I had no marking to do, and spent no time on planning assignments, exams, etc. Finally, I only went to the gym twice, since Geekman was away for two days and I don't tend to go without him. Usually we go at least three times in a seven day period. Otherwise the week was pretty average.

On my busiest day I spent 8 hours 15 minutes on work, 3.5 hours on fun, and 3.5 hours on routine.

On one day I did no work at all.

So mostly my week is pretty bloody good. A whole day off, less than 8 hours work most days. Less than a 40-hour week all up.


Surprises

I hadn't realised how much time I spent in meetings (5 hours 30 minutes a week!) or on routine tasks (an average of 4 hours a day!).

If you had asked me, I would have guessed I spent more time on the internet than I do (9 hours a week). I was pretty relieved to discover that. As I was to see how little time I spend watching "TV" (actually DVDs; we don't have a TV): 4 hours a week.


And there are still a few things I would like to change

I would like to have more evenings without any work at all. This shouldn't be hard, since an evening (e.g. from 6:30 pm to 10:30 pm) is only four hours, and if an hour of that is taken up by cooking and eating, that's only three hours of my "fun" budget. I spent at least three hours on fun activities every day except Tuesday. So the time is available: I just have to stick it into my evening rather than spread it through the day. I find psychologically that having a whole free evening feels much more relaxing than taking lots of shorter breaks during the day.

I would like to spend less time on "routine" tasks. Most mornings it took an hour from getting up to getting out the door, and none of that was spent doing anything fun. On a couple of days I managed to cut that time down to half an hour or 45 minutes, and I'd like to do that on a regular basis. The 15 or 30 minutes saved could be spent doing something I actually enjoy. I like cooking, eating, and (mostly) exercising, so I don't want to cut that time down on a regular basis, but I need to be aware that if I have a really busy day in other respects, I could save a lot of time by managing routine tasks better or just putting them off until I'm less busy.

I would like to spend more time reading than I did last week (5 hours 30 minutes). I had run out of library books for the first three days I recorded, though, so maybe I usually read more than that. I would like to spend more time reading non-fiction, too.


Actual changes I am going to make

1. I am going to try and cut my morning routine down to 40 minutes from now on.
2. I am going to try to get all my Wednesday prep done by Tuesday afternoon, and my Monday prep done on Friday. That would balance my days much better so that there isn't such a big difference between my busiest days (8 hours 15 minutes on work) and my slowest (less than 3 hours on work.)
3. I am going to skip one meeting a week, when possible. There are some that I only attend out of a sense of duty and no one would really notice my absence.
4. I am going to make a real effort to take no long breaks for fun things during my time in the office (15 minutes for coffee is fine; 1 hour for web surfing is not). That way I should be able to stop bringing work home in the evenings.

Representative student/lecturer email exchange

Hi,

I'm really confused about the assignment. Can I come by your office tomorrow to talk about it?

Stud. Ent.


Hi Stud Ent,

That's fine. I can be in my office at a time between 10--12 and probably from 2--4 as well. Let me know when you want to meet.

Teach. Er.


Hi,

Thanks so much. That will be really helpful. I think I've worked some stuff out, but I'd still like to talk to you. See you tomorrow.

Stud Ent.


Why don't they ever READ the bit where I ask them to specify a time? And then if I'm not in my office when they do drop by, they interpret that as, "I made an appointment and she wasn't even there!" and I get skewered on the evaluation forms where it asks, "Was the lecturer available for questions and discussion outside class hours?"

Gah!

(And today's one didn't show at all, even though I was in my office for the whole of the suggested time windows.)

Misanthrope, c'est moi.

Too grumpy to post. Back on Sunday.

(You'd think going to a public lecture where the pre-lecture "refreshments" turned out to be gin and tonics would have helped. But no. Still grumpy.)

The student confessed

My cheater, that is.

But you know what? Apparently it's my fault. She told me she had been on holiday, and then I insisted that she sit the quiz anyway. Without preparation. She therefore had no choice but to copy someone. And she didn't really copy, anyway. She did rewrite some of the answers into her own words. Which is practically the same as writing her own answers. Because, it's not, like, plagiarism.

If I had wanted her not to copy, I would have given her an extra week to prepare.

I'm beautiful but irrelevant

Because I am innovative or stupid, or maybe just in an insidious attempt to make my students think I care about them, I gave mid-semester evaluations today. Most people in my department, and probably my university, only give end-of-semester evaluations. But I figured that if the students are hating something I am doing, I'd rather know about it now while there is still time to change than get my arse kicked on the evals that matter and be able to do nothing about it.

There were a few multiple choice questions (Are we covering material too fast, too slow, just right, and how is your porridge?) and some short answers (How many hours per week are you spending on this class? Don't lie, God and your mother are watching you.) Then there was a space for them to add any further comments.

Weirdest comment:
I don't get what the point of this class is. I mean, I'm an English teacher, but I don't see how knowing what a pronoun is, how verb agreement works, or how to diagram a sentence is going to help me with my job, let alone my real life. Is this just meant to be some sort of geeky fun, or is there a practical application that I don't know about?

I can see how your average arts student might find linguistics a little irrelevant to his or her life, but for an English teacher, I would have thought the benefits would be clear. Also, what sort of "real life" application is s/he expecting? Would s/he ask the same question of a chemistry class? (Excuse me, I can't see how this formula will help me with my cooking!) Or of English literature? (Will being able to quote Shakespeare help me get rich quick?)

Favourite comment:
I like your class very much. I like that everything is on the website. And you are the most beautiful teacher I have ever seen.

Mostly, though, the comments were very helpful.

For example, I have been putting all my examples and terminology on overheads during class, and then uploading them to WebCT directly afterwards, so that students can download their own copies. Almost without exception, students said they would prefer paper copies in class so that they can write notes directly onto the examples. Which is fair enough. I was avoiding it because (a) it kills trees, (b) I worry that students don't really listen if they feel they don't need to take notes and (c) I have a copy limit of 1000 pages, and 80 students x 2 pages x 26 lectures goes four times over that. But I'll find a way to make it happen.

I also asked if they want a tutorial on how to write essays, and was expecting that most of them would. Instead, they mostly noted that they have had these already in many other classes, and would just like a handout or short briefing on how expectations for linguistics essays differ from other arts subjects. I can do that.

Overall, I think the evaluations were extremely useful, and I'll not hesitate to do them again. Especially if it means anonymous people tell me I'm beautiful.

Tuesday time-sheet

Routine essentials
Morning routine: 1 hour
Exercise (at the gym): 1 hour
Travel (cycling): 30 minutes
Cooking and eating: 45 minutes
Total: 3 hours 15 minutes

Work
Teaching preparation and admin: 5 hours 15 minutes
Meetings: 1 hour
Teaching: 1 hour
Thesis revisions: 1 hour
8 hours 15 minutes

Just for fun
Blogging and surfing: 35 minutes
Toastmasters preparation: 20 minutes
Knitting: 1 hour
Reading: 1 hour
2 hours 55 minutes


And that ends the week of this little experiment. Tomorrow I'll total up the time I spent doing various tasks and see what conclusions to draw. My preliminary impression is that I am mostly more productive than I had realised, and that I didn't understand how much of my time goes into routine things that have to be done. Also, I don't think there is as much difference as I had thought between how I spend time on a day that feels productive and how I spend time on a day that feels unproductive.

PSA: When learning to knit, don't make things that come in pairs

I just finished my first ever knitting project!

Guess which sock I knitted first.


(In the background you can see the colour that our landlady thought was appropriate for a rental property carpet. We've had it a week now and it's survived. But I'm very, very nervous. There will be rugs in our future.)

Monday's time-sheet

Routine essentials
Morning routine: 1 hour
Eating and cooking: 1 hour 30 minutes
Travel (cycling): 30 minutes
Total = 3 hours

Work
Meetings: 2 hours
Seminar: 1 hour
Teaching prep: 2 hours 30 minutes
Teaching: 2 hours
Total = 7 hours 30 minutes

Just for fun
Parrot watching: 15 minutes
Taking a walk with Geekman: 25 minutes
Blogging and surfing: 39 minutes
Watching DVDs: 1 hour
Reading: 1 hour
Total = 3 hours 19 minutes

Under stone, over my dead body

Since I've always wished I'd owned this set of books, I guess I need to get them soon, otherwise I'll be left with no choice but to pay double the price for a set whose jackets feature irritating American children and Lovejoy impersonating Merriman Lyon.

Ugh.

How can you expect me to work, with a view like this?

The crimson rosellas that visited my office window sill at university have come back every day since, and today I had this lovely little visitor (an eastern rosella) as well.


I just wish the university cleaned its windows more frequently than, well, never. How am I meant to take bird photos through dirty glass? Don't they understand the needs of their employees?

Anyway, now that I am putting out birdseed at home and at work, I am going through around 3kg of the stuff every week. My zombie* parrot army now consists of at least two pairs of cockatoos (Flappy and Flappy, and the other Flappys), plus one loner (Mr Psycho McFlappy), one galah, one king parrot, eight crimson rosellas, one eastern rosella, and some civilians non-parrots (currawongs, magpie-larks, wood pigeons).

Soon, soon, my pretties, we will take over the world...

___________

* I blame too much Facebook. (For everything).

Hee hee

Email question from a student: "Is it okay if I write the assignment on double-sided paper?"

I'm thinking of telling her to do it on a Moebius strip instead.

Saturday and Sunday time-sheet

Saturday

Routine essentials
Morning routine: 1 hour
Shopping (groceries, birthday presents, rugs): 5 hours
Haircut: 1 hour
Cooking and eating: 1 hour
Travel: 45 minutes
Total: 8 hours 45 minutes

Just for fun
Reading: 2 hours
Scrabble: 1 hour
Blogging and surfing: 1 hour
Socialising (party): 3 hours
Total: 7 hours

Sunday

Routine essentials
Morning routine: 1 hour
Cooking and eating: 1 hour
Travel: 30 minutes
Total: 2 hours 30 minutes

Work
Teaching prep: 2 hours
Department social event: 2 hours 30 minutes
Tax return: 1 hour 23 minutes
Total: 5 hours 53 minutes

Just for fun
Scrabble: 1 hour 5 minutes
Hanging out with Geekman: 1 hour
Watching DVDs: 1 hour 15 minutes
Reading blogs, blogging: 1 hour 30 minutes
Reading: 30 minutes
Total: 5 hours 20 minutes

One of these ads is not like the others

I came across this ad in the sidebar of the Herald Sun online today.


Is it just me, or does that sound like no fun whatsoever?

Friday timesheet

I have no excuse for Friday. Fridays always bother me, because I intend to do lots of teaching preparation, but the day gets sucked up into procrastination, weekend planning, and meetings.

Routine essentials
Morning routine: 1 hour
Travel (cycling to, from and across campus): 30 mins
Cooking and eating: 1 hour 30 minutes
Phoning my mother: 50 minutes
Total = 3 hours 50 minutes

Work
Coffee breaks: 30 mins
Meetings: 1 hour 30 minutes
Diss revisions: 1 hour 10 minutes
Teaching prep: 2 hours
Total = 5 hours 10 minutes

Just for fun
Scrabble: 1 hour 30 mins
Blogging and surfing the web: 1 hour 35 minutes
Knitting: 1 hour
Reading: 1 hour
Total: 5 hours 5 minutes

Actually, that wasn't as bad a day as I thought it was. Although I didn't get much time, most of the "wasted" time wasn't me procrastinating, but rather unavoidable things like meetings, phoning my mother and the usual routine.

Things my hairdresser said today that made me want to bite her

• "Have you just had a baby, darling? [What, right now? Let me check. I think I would have noticed.] Or are you going to have one? Because your hair is very strange. Often hormones do that."
• "When did you last wash your hair, darling? This morning? Because feel this.... Does that feel clean to you? No, me neither."
• "Do you ever tease your hair on top? Well you should. Because with larger ears like yours, darling, it looks funny if it is wider at the sides than on top. I guess that's partly your glasses, too. It's funny how they stick out from the sides of your head so much. Most people's glasses sit much closer in."
• "See this protein spray that I'm using on your hair now?* You really need to buy some of this. It's quite expensive, but with your hair... It looks awful if you don't smooth it down with a product like this one."

And the final Conversation of Doom

"Now, let me just blow dry your hair."

"Um, don't you guys charge lots extra for blow drying?"

They are a cut-price salon ($20 cut) and they make their money by up-selling to blow-drys ($10 extra) and shampooing ($25 extra). I figure I only come out ahead if I don't request any extras. Usually this is not a problem; I have never had an aggressive hairdresser before.

"It's only $10."

"I don't blow dry it at home, anyway. My hair goes fluffy if I use a dryer. I'll just let it dry naturally."

"Well, darling, I'm sorry, but I can't let you just walk out of here like that. It looks awful. And I can't tell whether I have cut it evenly or not unless I dry it."

"Every other time I've been here I've left with damp hair. It's fine."

"Your hair, darling, is so fine that it will look uneven until I dry it. And I just can't tell if it is finished until it is dry. What do you have against drying it, anyway?"

"My hair gets fluffy and damaged if I dry it too often." This is true. I never blow-dry it at home.

"Well just this once you are going to have to trust me."

I was so ready to just storm out and complain to the manager that the hairdresser was acting like my mother, but I am a wimp, so I let her dry it. Then:

"Oh dear! Darling! Your hair is horribly fluffy and dry. You see now why you need to buy this protein spray? Look how it smooths it all down."

Yes, it solves a problem that she created in the first place. Grrr! (And no, I didn't buy the product.)

_________

* What is with putting protein in hair products? Hair is dead. Protein is not going to help.

You guys need to learn the language

Brazen Hussy's post this morning reminded me of something that makes me laugh every time I think about it.

I'm editing a proceedings volume from a workshop I ran last year, and my supervisor submitted a paper to it. We recently (finally!) got her paper back from reviewers, and they said it needed editing by a native English speaker.

My supervisor is American.

Yesterday's timesheet

Thursdays are all about recovering from Wednesdays. I got up late and went to bed early. So my total awake time was less than usual too (just over 12 hours).

Routine essentials:
Morning routine: 45 minutes
Cooking and eating: 2 hours 30 minutes
Travel (cycling to and from home and across campus): 42 mins
Exercise: 1 hour
TOTAL = 5 hours

Work:
Dissertation revisions: 2 hours 20 minutes
Work-related emails: 20 minutes
Coffee breaks: 10 minutes
TOTAL = 2 hours 50 minutes

Just for fun:
Knitting: 1 hour
Socialising: 1 hour 30 minutes
Internet surfing and blogging: 1 hour
Watching DVDs: 45 minutes
TOTAL = 4 hours 15 minutes

I guess I could cut some of that "just for fun" time. And I hadn't realised how much time cooking and eating takes up. I wonder if that is usual? I guess I'll see over the next week.

My students crack me up

Yesterday I spent some time explaining to the students how to identify an infinitive. "Beware!" I told them. "They don't always come with a to in front of them. To go, to eat, to play: all of those are easy to spot. But sometimes the to is omitted. And then you have to look for other clues to see if your verb is an infinitive or a finite form."

I explained what these other clues were, then gave them a quick test. "In the sentence I must go now, is go a finite form or an infinitive?"

"An infinitive!" One of the students answered immediately.

"Excellent," I praised her. "And how do you know?"

She beamed proudly. "Because there is an omitted to."

Don't you hate it when....

... your notifier tells you you have a new email message, and you get all excited, only to find out it's something you sent to yourself?

A day in the life

For some reason, I have been feeling an odd desire to make some new year's resolutions. Maybe it's that I'm now far enough into the teaching semester to feel like I'm in control of my life again.

One of my big struggles at the moment is managing my time. Getting a good balance between spending enough time on teaching to do a good job, but not letting it suck up every available minute. So you know how they say when you are thinking about changing your eating habits, you should start by keeping a log of everything you eat? Well I'm thinking about changing my time management habits, so I'm going to start by keeping a log of everything I do.

Obviously that would get kind of boring to read, so I'm not going to do it here. I thought (inspired by Anastasia) that I'd do one "day in the life" post here, and then post a daily summary (e.g. 3 hours teaching prep, 1 hour teaching, 3 hours watching parrots, 6 hours writing down what I was doing, etc). Maybe for a week. I'm keeping notes on what I'm doing every hour in a notebook and I'll work out totals at the end of the day.

Here's the detailed "day in the life" version from yesterday.

7:20 Get up. Shower, etc.
7:40 Sweep balcony, vacuum, clean bathroom and kitchen (landlady is dropping by after dinner).
8:30 Quick breakfast, check emails.
8:45 Cycle to university.
9:07 Start prepping my 11:00 tutorial (I prepared for my 10:00 last night).
10:00 Teach.
11:00 Teach.
12:00 Student asks me for the "short version" of how linguists work out what languages were like in the past. I explain the entire discipline of historical linguistics in 5 minutes.
12:05 Student asks really really smart question pointing out a methodological flaw in the way compound nouns are analysed. I spend 10 minutes tying myself in intellectual knots, then promise to get back to her.
12:30 Toastmasters meeting. (I am president of our local group).
1:30 Fielding questions from visitors to Toastmasters who are thinking of joining.
1:58 Finally back in my office. Eat lunch. Try to play some Scrabble turns on Facebook, but the server is down.
2:15 Make overheads and run through lesson plan for my 3pm lecture.
3:00 Teach.
4:15 Back in office. Drink well-earned coffee. Read blogs and email to recover from all that teaching.
5:05 Cycle across campus to meet Geekman
5:15 Public lecture on how astronomers discover planets.
6:30 Coffee with Geekman
7:00 Choir practice.
9:30 Cycle home.
9:45 Eat dinner. Play Scrabble on Facebook.
10:30 Watch Star Trek episode (DVD)
11:30 Bed.

Obviously Wednesdays are atypical. Otherwise I would be dead or insane.

PSA: Facebook spheres collide

If you forget you have granted Facebook friendship to all your highly conservative and intensely religious cousins and ex-friends from high school

and

if you then post a status update which says, "going to a gay bar to watch a pole-dancing competition"

then

you will get many concerned emails from people threatening promising to pray for you.

And I thought I had nothing to blog about

Since no one usually records it for posterity when things turn out this way, I think it is important to note that I just dropped two pieces of cheese-on-toast on the floor, and they both landed face up.

I guess the inherent advantage of my current favourite snack—toast with philadelphia, chutney, and cheese, grilled until bubbly—is that all the bits tend to stick together.

So: intact, unfloored toast.

I declare today a success. <- Look! A speech act! (Yes, I've been spending too much time teaching undergraduate linguistics.)

A disturbing coincidence

1. It's been a week or so since I heard the possum that lives in our roof making any noise.
2. There's a funny smell in the bedroom.

I really hope these two observations are not related.

Geekman, watching a cockatoo on the balcony

"I wonder how old it is. Do you think we could cut it in half and count the rings?"

Someone cheated on the quiz

and (Quick! Everyone pretend to look surprised!) it's this student.

The evidence isn't rock solid, but I'm certain enough. (Two pieces of terminology used wrongly and weirdly and one made-up term that doesn't even exist. Both identical to the mistakes of the girl who was sitting next to her. None of these particular mistakes appeared in any of the other 88 students' quizzes.)

I'm not sure what I'll do if she doesn't confess, though. Even if I could prove that the two quizzes are too similar for it to be coincidence, it could have been that the other student copied from this one rather than vice versa. Considering the circumstances, I don't think that's likely, but I can't prove it isn't so. And I can't penalise both students for something that one of them was probably unaware of.

Resistance

Geekman demonstrates how introverts regard department retreats.

"It's not going to be any fun at all."

"You'll be at the beach!"

"It will be cold."

"There'll be good food! And chocolate!"

"I could have good food and chocolate here. And then I'd only have to hang out with people I like."

"You like some of your colleagues, don't you?"

"But I could like them from here."

Quick poll

What do you do when your supervisor tries to friend you on Facebook?

(a) Select "ignore" and hope they are able to overlook any feeling of offense when reading your next draft?

(b) Give them a "limited view" only, and hope they are able to overlook any feeling of offense when reading your next draft?

(c) Freak out and delete all incriminating parts of your profile page? (E.g. membership of groups like, "Arghhhhhhhhhh! Why did I do a Phd?!") Then accept the invitation?

Does it affect your answer if the friend request is accompanied by a message saying, "Help! Everyone's laughing at me because I have no friends!"