ALARMING PLAGUE OF DRAGONS!
Monday, 4 February 2013 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtToday is that interesting nexus of orientation/registration chaos which requires me to be simultaneously overseeing fifteen advisors on the registration floor in one venue, ten advisors giving orientation advice in another venue, and an all-day five-track programme of information talks from every department in the faculty and some from outside it, over five separate venues in three buildings, none of them the same as the registration or orientation venues. As Lara said in one session this morning, really time to get onto that cloning thing. I have been doing a rather large amount of trotting around since 7am, creating, copying and distributing leaflets, handouts, forms and posters and generally wrangling advisors, academics, orientation leaders and random confused students. It's the time of year when I can't walk for more than ten steps in any direction without being stopped by a bewildered student seeking rescue. My voice has mostly come back, only to slowly erode to huskiness again from overuse.
Also, the OLs are doing their jobs. Several of the academics are not, in that they have simply failed to turn up for their scheduled talk. I find my lack of surprise disturbing.
About eight hours of concerted effort over the weekend allowed me to finish examining that one remaining Masters thesis which has been hanging over my head for a month, and having it off my back is making me feel considerably lighter. This in spite of the fact that it was horribly plagiarised, and most of the eight hours entailed careful tracking down and checking of references in order to demonstrate that the wretched child was, in fact, simply copying out vast chunks of critical argument word-for-word, and seems to fondly imagine that an author/page reference slapped down in a bracket at the end of the paragraph adequately substitutes for either quotation marks or paraphrase. I swear, there were chunks of that thesis where I underlined every line for three or five pages straight, demonstrating ineluctably that there were a total of five actual words in her own voice over the entire thing. I weep for the younger generation. Or blush. Or both. Either way, get off my lawn.
In other news, apparently I have either being doing all this work stuff for long enough that I have it down and am achieving a state of Zen detachment from it all, or doing all this work stuff at this time of the year while loaded to the gills on anti-depressants really helps. Either way, I haven't bitten a student in days. I am quite astonishingly chilled about all this. Freedom from examination duties, and the fact that the rest of the week is all carefully scheduled and organised and should run pretty much under its own steam without further administrative prodding, leaves me blissfully open in the evenings. And with exquisite timing, the next Skyrim DLC comes out tomorrow. Score.
Also, the OLs are doing their jobs. Several of the academics are not, in that they have simply failed to turn up for their scheduled talk. I find my lack of surprise disturbing.
About eight hours of concerted effort over the weekend allowed me to finish examining that one remaining Masters thesis which has been hanging over my head for a month, and having it off my back is making me feel considerably lighter. This in spite of the fact that it was horribly plagiarised, and most of the eight hours entailed careful tracking down and checking of references in order to demonstrate that the wretched child was, in fact, simply copying out vast chunks of critical argument word-for-word, and seems to fondly imagine that an author/page reference slapped down in a bracket at the end of the paragraph adequately substitutes for either quotation marks or paraphrase. I swear, there were chunks of that thesis where I underlined every line for three or five pages straight, demonstrating ineluctably that there were a total of five actual words in her own voice over the entire thing. I weep for the younger generation. Or blush. Or both. Either way, get off my lawn.
In other news, apparently I have either being doing all this work stuff for long enough that I have it down and am achieving a state of Zen detachment from it all, or doing all this work stuff at this time of the year while loaded to the gills on anti-depressants really helps. Either way, I haven't bitten a student in days. I am quite astonishingly chilled about all this. Freedom from examination duties, and the fact that the rest of the week is all carefully scheduled and organised and should run pretty much under its own steam without further administrative prodding, leaves me blissfully open in the evenings. And with exquisite timing, the next Skyrim DLC comes out tomorrow. Score.
