Sound familiar?

Last week at work I got an email. I don't recall receiving the original email to which it refers. Here is what it said (names changed to protect the establishment...)

'[Named Administrator] would like to recall message: "Staff Survey 2008: Your Views Count!"'

Need I say more?

This week, I find this email has been 'externally erased' from my inbox (I think it has expired - it appears in grey type with lines through it).

Removing the evidence?

The news in brief. Or not so brief...

Well, it's been quite a week (and it's only Tuesday!). Really, I mean in a 7 days sort of way...

Today at 2pm I gave a lecture I finished writing at 1pm and taught a class 1-2pm. Cutting it a bit fine, eh?

Yesterday I gave a lecture I finished last Friday. Had I finished it on Wednesday according to the original plan which, as ever, was foiled by my inability to decide when enough reading is enough, or force myself to sit and write things before the matter becomes urgent, I could have finished today's lecture before today. I say I could have, but well, see the stuff about sticking to plans I just said...

And last week was mid term reading week. I'm very glad I wasn't teaching then.

Tomorrow, I'm having one of my classes observed. I'm so tired from the seemingly unrelenting lecture prep I've been doing for a week (immediately after finishing the marking I've been doing for ... ever???) that I can't even think about tomorrow's class. Let's hope the students in that class come with their best 'enquiring minds' and are trying to help me out. Some of them will. They are bright students, who enjoy lively discussion and usually come prepared. Some of them, however, don't like me ever since I drew attention to the fact that I knew that when they were supposed to be doing group work they were actually talking about how to excuse yourself from seminar absences (I swear I heard, 'Well, when you look at it, you've got 4 grandparents' come out of one of their mouths - in the middle of a seminar, when they were supposed to be doing something else and I hadn't left the room. Come on boys, use your brains, just a little bit).

This weekend Sees Through the Eyes of Children and I are going to a school reunion. It seems that there will, this year, be more people there that we might know. Maybe a post on this at a later date.

The weekend after that I have an interview for a post doc job down south. Way down South. Hey, I'm trying to get back up North! This was not the plan.

I forgot to publicly congratulate Aspiring Author on his new job. Well done. This is not 'news' so much any more, but I don't want to miss him out.

Needs Buckets More Confidence has also just got a permanent teaching job at a place she wants to be. I'm so very very pleased for her too. Hopefully this will start to give you the Buckets More Confidence that you need.

I have signed up to an internet provider for the New Flat. Hopefully will be connected in the next week or so. I am looking forward to that with some excitement. I might then post more frequently. Who knows? That way, I wouldn't have to try to squeeze all news into one hurried post...

Google doesn't think like me...

I just typed 'cavaliers' into google and asked it to seach images. I get spaniels and basketball players and more spaniels and a rugby shirt.

But what I actually want is a cavalier. Supporter of king Charles with long hair and a big hat. This is what I asked for. Can I have one? No. Because these do not come up early in the google search (unless you want this, which I really don't.)

It's times like this that make me think I'm really out of touch what those outside academia do...

It's not me, it's them...

One of my colleagues, who Worries Too Much, came to see me last week and asked if I would give a second opinion on a student essay she had marked. The student was extremely disappointed with the grade, and Worries Too Much was worried that she had been overly harsh because she has been stressed, ill and overworked recently. I said I would happily look at it, but that she Worries Too Much, and I was sure there was nothing wrong with her marking. We had moderated essay grades to make sure we were marking along the same lines, so I didn't think there would be too large a discrepancy between what I would give it, and what she did. The powers that be in the Department decided this re-mark was a bad idea. It will open the floodgates for all percentage-dissatisfied students to demand a second opinion. They suggested 'go through your comments with the student again'. In the end, the problem was resolved. The student had gone away, re-read the essay, thought about the comments on it and decided that it wasn't an unfair grade.

I sympathise with her to an extent. No one likes to do worse than they expect. And I remember an undergraduate essay that was the lowest mark I've ever got. I was disappointed. I went to ask the tutor to tell me how to make it better. I did not ask him to change the grade (although, after speaking to him I did feel that the essay topic we were set did not co-incide with the answer he had expected us to give, and that this was slightly unfair, but I accepted the grade and did better next time).

I've been returning essays to my students today. Some of them are very pleased with their grades; some are extremely disappointed. I try to put a positive spin on it - 'this is how you could improve it...' etc - but they don't really care. Not just now, anyway. (although some of them might when the shock has worn off). And their complete disappointment makes me wonder, was I too harsh in my marking? Should I get a second opinion?

I feel responsible for their disappointment. And then I think, it's not me, it's them. I didn't write the essay...

Milk messages

A bottle of milk has appeared in the staff room (for want of a better name for it) fridge. On it, a post it note reads "Drink Me". Well, given that we are an English Literature Department, I'd have thought we all would know what happens when we drink liquids marked in such a fashion...

"Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, `which certainly was not here before,' said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well
to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your
finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding
it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.

`What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.' And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going though the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; `for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, `in my going out altogether, like a
candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing. "

(Text taken from here)


So perhaps I, like 'wise little Alice', may not be doing THAT in a hurry. (Well, unless someone also leaves very small cakes marked 'EAT ME' too...)

Names

Names are important. I choose to adopt a pseudonym for the blog so that what I write won't immediately be traced back to me. It gives me a freedom to say things about work and students and academia which I wouldn't necessarily want to whole academic world to read. But I chose Autumn Song because I have a fondness for autumn colours, and I think it suits me. Maybe those who know me disagree...

The names by which I am known have, until now, been a good indicator of the point in my life when the people who use them met me. My sister, who is so good at her primary school teaching job because she Sees Through the Eyes of Children has her own name for me, which others don't use. Supermum uses a mix of nicknames, full names and abreviations. Those friends I have had since I was young use one shortening of my name; those who met me at university use another. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it works most of the time. And I quite like the distinctions. It would seem odd to me if someone from one of these groups started to use the name used by the other. There are, of course, those friends and acquaintances who never use an abbreviation, either because we are not close, or because they choose not to. I don't remember He Who Once Loved Me ever shortening my name. I didn't take that as a lack of affection.

Today, one of my students sent an email to the course convenor with a request to reorganise the virtual learning environment page for the course. (And he's right, it does need tidying up.) In giving an example, he made a reference to me using a shortening of my name. I've had a few emails addressed like that too, from other students. I don't expect my students to call me Dr. or Ms. or anything particularly formal. In fact, I prefer it when they use my first name - I don't like to enforce hierarchies with students, and I find telling them to use my first name is a good way to make them feel their opinion counts for as much as mine in seminar discussions. I always address them using whichever name they use to introduce themselves in the first class (I ask them to introduce themselves by the name which they would like me to use rather than the one I've been given on the formal register) and expect them to use my name as I introduce myself to them. Shortening it implies a level of familiarity I don't feel is appropriate (there has been an exception, when a whole group chose to address me by my initials, but they asked my permission to do it, and I agreed, and I don't think this is quite the same).

What names people use is important to me - what they ask me to call them, and what they call me. Is there a way to stamp out this familiarity without seeming to assert strict hierarchies I don't want to enforce? (or upsetting those students who are over familiar without thinking about it?) Or am I doomed to be abbreviated indiscriminately for the rest of my career? Maybe I need to come up with a new name entirely for my newly qualified academic life...

Any suggestions?

Blank space?

I received a booklet of information from the UCU the other day. In the middle of the back page it read:

"This page has been deliberately left blank."

This puzzles me.

Perhaps a better phrase would be:

"This page has been deliberately written on so you know nothing is missing."

But then, I suppose, I wouldn't know it was meant to be blank, would I?

This week's theory...

My theory seminars this week allowed me to write 'Buffy?' (as in vampire slayer) as a good example in the margin of the article we were discussing, and have an entirely academic conversation about Dr Who during the seminar. I could also have sensibly answered a student's question with "Yes. Think about Brad Pitt's body in Troy", but exercised a certain amount of restraint (I told them to think about Renaissance art sculptures instead).

Sometimes, although not often, I like teaching theory!

Sonnets

I love sonnets. Intricately constructed, carefully argued, neatly written. There's something very pleasing in the form of a sonnet.

I like teaching sonnets too. In my first-year classes at the university at the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss, I asked students to find a sonnet and bring it with them to the tutorial. I told them Shakespeare wasn't allowed though - that's too easy to find. We could then talk about the sonnet form in relation to poems that they chose ("See, it doesn't just work with sonnets I pick; we can talk about the use of the sonnet structure in all sonnets..."). It's surprising how few times two students brought the same one, and I now know of some beautiful sonnets that I wouldn't otherwise have read.

This week I'm teaching Shakespeare's sonnets. I'd forgotten how much I like them. Here is one of my favourites. Enjoy!


Sonnet 138

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not t'have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.