A first today - unexpected

I spoke to a journalist today, who rang me!

That was a bit of a surprise. She was ringing about a study I'm involved in. Seemingly, the leaders of the study issued a press statement that mentionned my name (last in all 3 collaborators) - they didn't inform me about that, and even though I was aware they were going to contact the press, this kinda sucks.

Anyhow, after trying to reach everybody else on the list, and no one picked up, she contacted me. I couldn't answer all her questions (and was therefore careful not to), and I think considering the fact I was not expecting this phone call at all, I did OK...

Few! My hands were sweaty when I put the phone down though!

So maybe my work actually IS exciting.

Doesn't it feel much bettah when you've had a better day then yesterday

For some reasons that escape me I find this piece strangely enticing. Not the stuff I usually listen to (but I'm a very open person don't you know).

On the other hand I much preferred these guys then than now, when they were a rather obscure afternoon small stage band in festivals as opposed to close to head of line up, big stage in the evening...

Back to some spring cleaning activities...

Oh I was busy with this too

Going to the concert of Jarvis Cocker.

He rocks.

'I never said I was deep, but I am profoundly shallow'

He didn't sing 'Running the world' though...

where's June?

I've been doing a lot of blogging recently, all n my head, unfortunately...

All for good reason (hm, I s'pose anyway).

Well there were exams, there were projects of projects coming together (can we pull together a proposal for mid august? here's a challenge for you).

And now I'm baking for tomorrow's end of term party in the department.

Maybe I've wasted some times on oh so wasteful things like, er, attending masters dissertation defences... all the professor come in and out whenever they're part of the jury... that's not great for the sudents, is it?

And an update on the spring cleaning

Paper 1 : main study done during post doc
->Submitted !

Paper 2 : was mostly a side thing during post-doc but has now reached a critical point.
->Making good progress! Got back in touch with Co-Author, and have a simili-deadline (CA back from field work) to send a proper first draft to him!

Paper 3: almost there, but not leader so kind of out of my control, and still a few analysis to run. ->Ran all necessary analysis. It's now out of my hands and in the hands of someone whom I trust to do as fast a job on this as possible. As in: wants to submit PhD thesis July...

Paper 4: still at the stage of building up data. My summer job.
->not much else than some research on the methods there.

Paper 5: one that will require attention soon since there’s a conference end of July where we submitted an abstract….
->back properly on this one. Hope I won't encounter too much cr*p before the conference.

So I'm rather happy with the way things are going... fingers crossed with that submitted one...

Live from grading labyrinth

My students (or should I say "pupils"?) this year have a problem: they cannot be concise. Some of them anyway. It makes reading their answers very soporific.

I always include a maximum to the length of their answers (always a bit more than what is necessary, in big writing, to fit everything necessary for a correct answer), but some of them have problems sticking to the limit. And write in tiny fly's footprints (if you see what I mean) from one edge of the paper to the other.

And so what is partly one more aspects of how they should answer (concisely) and a way to rationalise my time use is not working. I'm falling asleep over wordy, overlong answers...

I watched over one of the exams and it was funny and irritating to have them asking questions on the *exact* meaning of the wording of the question. Just read the bleeding thing! There's no hidden meaning! Don't you ever play board game and read rules? Same thing: it means what it says!

And yes, we did cover topic x in class.

No need for this pretty graph, my nose tells it all

:

There you go, the official data. Yellow is max 1999-2008, green the average, and red is the bloody massive spike we're going trough right now.

Could have told you that. Akchully, I did.

I can has rainz?

Glamourous

Last weekend, after Husband and myself had worked way too much for a sunny weekend, we decided to go to the nearby park and have a picnic. As you can see, on the menu: gin&tonic and crisps. Mh, and very nice break in the beautiful weather. That was as much outdoors as my hay fever allowed me to have comfortably over the past week. Sneezing and itchy nose hell was unleashed tonight after I spent 15 minutes in the wind on a more countrysid-ish train platform. Stoopid me.

Two unrelated notes.

I have noticed that Students seem to mostly refer to themselves as "pupils". Isn't this weird? I think when I was a Student, I would have been so proud to refer to myself as a Student, and not a mere pupil. Pupil is for secondary school, no? No wonder they think we need to hold their hand all the time if they refer to themselves as pupils. Ahem.

I've helped my godson (for default of a better term, really, he shouldn't count on me for uncritical religious education) for preparing his english exam. They seem to be talking about way more glamourous stuff than I did when I was at school. A sample: Sharon Stone and the media, cosmetic surgery, speed dating. We were watching TV movies of Miss Marple stories.