can't talk, orienting
Wednesday, 2 February 2011 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtFive hours of almost continuous talking this morning, giving curriculum design workshops and deconstructing culturally provocative skits to a vociferous audience of first-years. I'd be dead except I'm hopped on Red Bull, which still tastes bloody awful but appears to work.
Highlight of today: I was wandering around before the opening session when the Vice Chancellor arrived to give his opening address. He spontaneously congratulated me in passing on my talk to parents at parents' orientation yesterday. (Many are the terrors of my job, parents' orientation high among them. See danger pay). I was somewhat discombobulated by this, on account of how I didn't expect these august upper-level bods to be doing quality assurance with quite this level of hands-on energy, until I remembered that the VC has a son starting in our faculty this year and was therefore legitimately lurking in the audience wearing quite another hat. The VC says as a parent he found my talk very reassuring. Achievement Unlocked: Reassure ViceChancellor. Hooray.
Interesting discovery of the day: I'm a much nicer person during these terror-filled weeks if I've dosed myself on my sleeping pills the night before (which I had to do last night on account of the fretting). They are, after all, mild tranquillisers, which may explain why I don't bite students nearly as often, and respond to the usual emergencies with a relatively serene calm. The new benediction: may all your curriculum advisors be chemically assisted.
Highlight of today: I was wandering around before the opening session when the Vice Chancellor arrived to give his opening address. He spontaneously congratulated me in passing on my talk to parents at parents' orientation yesterday. (Many are the terrors of my job, parents' orientation high among them. See danger pay). I was somewhat discombobulated by this, on account of how I didn't expect these august upper-level bods to be doing quality assurance with quite this level of hands-on energy, until I remembered that the VC has a son starting in our faculty this year and was therefore legitimately lurking in the audience wearing quite another hat. The VC says as a parent he found my talk very reassuring. Achievement Unlocked: Reassure ViceChancellor. Hooray.
Interesting discovery of the day: I'm a much nicer person during these terror-filled weeks if I've dosed myself on my sleeping pills the night before (which I had to do last night on account of the fretting). They are, after all, mild tranquillisers, which may explain why I don't bite students nearly as often, and respond to the usual emergencies with a relatively serene calm. The new benediction: may all your curriculum advisors be chemically assisted.
