Hands on the table!

Recently, (I have been crazy busy, but nevermind) I have noticed on regular occasions students fiddling under the table.

As in texting under the table. It drives me crazy. Surely, this is as bad as calling and it means their phone is on, which is bad enough.

But they are trying to be discrete and I have not heard any noisy new message boink boink...

I really don't find this acceptable but on the other hand although I'm pretty sure that is what they are doing, I'm not 100% sure... I'm teaching after all and always get only a glimpse...

And how would that look like?? "Hands on the table! There shall be no fiddling on your lap in class"

It would be hilarious, no? Ahem.

Or something proper to celebrate!

Missed my blogiversary! It was last sunday.

Yahoo, I like this, and I will continue. There.

A cake to celebrate...

... this novelty: students mispelling their own name on the cover page of a report.

OK, first I did not celebrate this, I just noticed, and the cake was even done before. I also noticed that they made not one but two mistakes in my name in the reference list. Mind you they did about 4 or 5 spelling mistakes on each page of this 22 pages report.

OK, since this was a group report, you can assume that it's someone else than the victim who made the mistake, but that does not make it any better.

I have so far read 1 out of 4 reports, but seemingly, 2 have overshot the page limit by about 30%... That's not good either. And I thought the page limit was high. But no. Of course if you repeat 3 times the same thing, it can take more pages.

How annoyed should you be at someone mispelling your name? I will admit that even here I have not the easiest-to-spell family name. But surely, that shouldn't be a reason. The other recent occasion someone mispelled my name was on the cover page for a report for a thesis comittee to which I attended. Ah, surely, it really is without any consequences, I wouldn't hold this against anyone. But is this an additional sign of faltaring basic mutual respect between individuals? (I must sound like a total old complainy hag).

Has anyone ever mispelled your name when they should have paid a bit of attention? (I'm not speaking restaurant reservation over the phone or shit like that) What did you think about it?

Oh noes!

Who would have thought cherry tomatoes would be this hazardous to eat?

On the day when prospective students are coming!!

Thank goodness for long covering scarves.

I do want to post in more lenght, to give out about students and also other, more interesting things, but the arrival of not one but TWO brand new and very first PhD students is taking some time. Did I mention teaching?

You guys take care.