So, Mister Bond, what is your experience with peer-group leadership?

[freckles_and_doubt]

This week has been completely mad, mostly because I'm trying to combine the ravages of Sid with three solid days of interviews with students for purposes of choosing orientation leaders. This has led to the following:
1. The uneasy realisation that probably everyone in the universe but me was a prefect at school. Also, contrary to expectation, the upshot of piling CVs from approximately 53 prefects and 22 head students onto one corner of my desk is not, in fact, a black hole created from critical worthiness mass. Colour me surprised.
2. These are bloody nice kids, and are tending to positively reinforce my tendency to rather like students.
3. After the twenty-sixth interview I have to forcibly prevent myself from leaning back in my chair and steepling my fingers while formulating searching personal questions. Memo to self: am not auditioning minions.

After hitting mac1235 for same, I devoured the first five episodes in the new season of Doctor Who in a marvellous gulp over the weekend. I was all braced to be narked to the max by Donna, who was truly irritating in the Christmas special, but in fact they've toned her down, or perhaps she's toned herself down, enough that I actually rather like her. She's being very nicely built up as having genuine reasons for self-esteem issues, above which she tends to rise pleasingly when the chips are down. She's also down-to-earth in a way which provides wonderful ballast to the Doctor's flightiness, and she offers the complete antithesis to Martha's slightly-droopy-schoolgirl-crushiness. Also, the first episode's Alien Du Jour succeeded in being both cute and fundamentally disgusting in a way I have to respect.

On a not unrelated note, those of you who don't read Neil Gaiman regularly (and I have to add, why the hell not??) may have missed his rather gorgeous piece of Doctor/Shakespeare crossover (scroll down a bit). It's note-perfect. He's a clever man.

Now I have to go and mark twenty-three third-year essays on Vampires and The Sex, which are lurking rather entertainingly under a photocopied reading entitled "Welcome to bisexuality, Captain Kirk!" A quick survey of essay text-choice reveals, on the upside, Buffy, David Gemmel, The Hunger, (fangirlfangirlfangirl) and Tim Powers (wow!). On the downside, umpteen discourses on Interview with a Vampire and two on Queen of the Damned (throws self out of window on reflex). Wish me luck.

p.s. OMG! The fourth student in the pile entitles himself Firstname "The Dragon" Surname. Am wishing I had the courage to sign myself under his awarded mark as Extemp "Docinatrix" -oranea.

Comments

[origamitiger.livejournal.com]

I am in the crowd scenes of the rock concert in Queen of the Damened hand have the t-shirt to prove it.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I shall endeavour to bear this in mind as a mitigating circumstance while marking, but I don't think it'll be enough. I haven't seen the film, but all the reviews I've read suggest that it significantly lowers the bar on the unspeakable dreckiness that was the novel.

Anne Rice. Pshaw.

[origamitiger.livejournal.com]

Oh it is a terrible movie, shot in australia, not in any of the real countries. I just mentioned it has it was on of my first real introductions to the goth scene.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Yes, I would imagine that that would be one of its few virtues...

Queen of the ok-ish

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

I didn't hate it. I didn't looooove it either. It was ok, as Anne Rice Wampeeer movies go. Stuart Townsend in leather, singing. Mmmmmm.

[scroobious (from livejournal.com)]

PLEEEEASE sign yourself "Docinatrix". PLEEEEEEEAAASE.

Please.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

It's not that it would unduly encourage the student, it's that it would unduly encourage the superhero-nicknaming powers of stv.

I need a superhero icon. Hmmm.

[maxbarners.livejournal.com]

:-]

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

oh, good grief. Now I'm cackling loudly enough to worry that I'm disturbing the exam down the hall...

That's lovely, in a disturbing sort of way. It's disturbing to think that you think of me as being capable of brandishing a whip and a cup of tea in the same hand.

[(Anonymous)]

There's a bit of chalk there as well, but it's behind the cup.
Between digits 7 and 8.

:-]

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Between digits 7 and 8.

Like a cigarette... This is your louche, sophisticated academic stereotype.

Noble Gassing

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, Catherine Tate was actually likeable; that first scene from the first episode, where she and the Doctor are signaling to each other through the windows, was funny. Her retorts in the Agatha Christie episode were also pretty quick. :-)

That moniker allows for plenty of "Enter: The Dragon" quips, as he/she comes into the tutorial room.

PK.

Re: Noble Gassing

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Damn, haven't seen the Agatha Christie one yet. Looking forward to it - if I was in the Tardis I'd be insisting the Doctor took me off to meet Dorothy Sayers, but Christie would be interesting as well.

Giving the student strife about the nickname is rather stymied by the fact that (a) term's now over so I don't see them again, and (b) I never can connect names to faces, anyway, a distressing flaw in a lecturer.

The dragon

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

Perhaps he's a fan of Don "The Dragon" Wilson, star of such wonders as Bloodfist I-VIII and Sci-fighter.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0933310/

ps: check out the message boards for flame wars of "Seagal vs the Dragon - who would win" :P.

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

You are absolutely interviewing minions. Ask them how comfortable they are with shark tank maintenance.

[bronchitikat.livejournal.com]

I wasn't a school prefect, or anything remotely like one. Got to 'head' a dinner table, but that was as a pair, & everyone in the fifth form did it.