The Venting Thread

[mamselle]

Maybe I really did get off easy, the time I had to enter 60 addresses and related info into a mail merge for a grad student's job search when I was covering his prof's EA for that week (Without advance warning, a-hem)...

At least, I suppose, I didn't have to create passwords, just had to do the merge, correct the mismatches, and stuff and frank the envelopes....

Long ago....and oh, so far away...

M.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Unrelated.

Fuck YOU, Universe!

[clean]

Unrelated.

Fuck YOU, Universe

You posted in the RIP thread, so I understand your issues and sorry to hear of your situation.

[mamselle]

Unrelated.

Fuck YOU, Universe

You posted in the RIP thread, so I understand your issues and sorry to hear of your situation.

Yes.

All good thoughts.

M.

[Harlow2]

So sorry, EPW

[Harlow2]

Graduate student dissertation proposal written as part of a class contains multiple examples of plagiarism.  Student works in university setting (thankfully not this one). We have a clearly laid out policy, but there went an entire day.

[apl68]

Graduate student dissertation proposal written as part of a class contains multiple examples of plagiarism.  Student works in university setting (thankfully not this one). We have a clearly laid out policy, but there went an entire day.

The next Quentin Rowan?

[Harlow2]

I'd forgotten about that guy. Yikes! 

[mamselle]

You're scaring me. I don't want to have to buy a new phone, or deal with all the change-over stuff (last time I did, they lost all my data...) But that's a vent for another day.

Today's vent:

I love you, dear, sweet, goofy middle-school music student. And I realize it's not your fault your dear, misguided, half-in-this-world-half-in-922-CE-Norway folks (who make wonderful costumes and swing a great hauberk) decided to re-do the WHOLE HOUSE with people here and keyboards there and construction gangs everywhere all day, every day, making noise and moving stuff around.

And it's certainly not (entirely) their fault that the construction guys had hold-ups and now need to spend extra time to get the roof on now that the bump-outs are all done, before winter really hits.

I get it. They started last March, and it really should be done by now.

Nor is it your fault that your new school is harder and you're tired-er, and you come home feeling less like doing a lesson and not at all like finding a place to do it in...the basement's fine with me, I'm on Zoom....but maybe it's cold down there now....

But when I email you all three, before your lessons on Sunday night and on the morning of each lesson, to confirm--giving you all ample chance to let me know "not today" before it's time--and then I get set up, and get things out, and do the Zoom call, and no-one shows up, and THEN you tell me you're not up to a lesson today after all, I get more than a little ticked!!!!

There are lots of weak points in the pipeline here--mostly with parents who let the construction guys take their time and didn't push until now, and with one parent in particular being very lax and letting the other one (who's the breadwinner, working mostly at home) take up the slack for hard decisions and all--and that one can't answer an email when they're on a cross-country call with their CEO--I do get that.

But I've tried several times to bring this to everyone's attention and you keep telling me it's going to be fine next week--and now, once again, it's not.

So I'm going to have to do something unilateral, like declare no lessons until after the construction is done, or something--because, dear student, you're a good kid and you try hard but no-one's giving you any shape or framework-of-life-structures to work from and you're going to have to learn it from somewhere, so I guess it's going to be me.

I thought when they announced this plan that it was crazed, but I didn't expect to become part of the collateral damage.

And I won't let myself be (and I will charge for the lesson), but I hope the kids don't, either.

What were they thinking????

(Thanks).

M.

ETA: We talked, it's sort-of sorted out, so that's to the good.

   It just never should have come to this--I'll have to trim back on the being-too-nice-stuff.

[mythbuster]

Dear Chair- I told you so!
   I've been very vocal the last three years about the need to offer Biochem lab more often and have more people to teach it. You kept blowing me off so we could hire more people in your favorite subspecialty that not many students want to study. Now the Biochem lab has a waitlist larger than the entire enrollment of available sections.

So you want ME to take an overload so the other instructor can teach the extra section of Biochem. I don't even want to consider the idea until you admit that I was right and come up with a plan to hire someone long term!

Say it. . .  I WAS RIGHT!

I actually like my chair, but it's just galling to be the Cassandra who has to remind people that the teaching needs ARE legit reasons to hire people. And in the long run, having the right teaching people would mean we all have more time for research.

[ergative]

We had a very small gathering on Saturday for Thanksgiving (non-US country, no Thanksgiving off, must make do on the weekend). We did everything right: everyone double-vaxxed, everyone tested in the morning before they came.

All that worked great. No Covid as far as we can tell. We had a lovely dinner.

The problem is that there are other viruses besides Covid. Like cold viruses. Like cold viruses that my body has forgotten how to fight because I've done nothing social for the last 20 months and I've lost all immunity.

Absolutive is fine. He goes to school to teach every day. His immune system was A+ ready to deal with colds. I'm knocked flat. Argh.

(No, it's really just a cold, and not covid. All of the cold symptoms; none of the covid symptoms, negative lateral flow test after I started feeling sick. Just a cold. Just a cold. I hate colds.)

[Langue_doc]

Car keys--both fobs--stopped working all of a sudden yesterday. I looked up the information about dead key fobs on the web, but the youtube videos wouldn't play so I had to restart the computer. Now I know what to do in theory but haven't had the energy to try to get the car to start, which involves removing the key from the fob, opening the car door, replacing the key in the fob, and then placing the fob on the start button. I'm teaching online, so I didn't have to worry about getting to work but need to get to the grocery store and also take the car to the shop later this week. Technology! Aargh!!!

[mamselle]

Computers make our lives easier...

M.

[Langue_doc]

Waiting for AAA to either jump start the car or install a new battery.

I had to call AAA on Thanksgiving morning because the car was stuck in the mud--the area I was in had had heavy rains all through summer and fall and was thus a quagmire of sorts. The AAA guy came properly equipped, pulled the car out of the mud, advised me to park only on one narrow car-long section which had stones underneath, and told me to call if the car got stuck again.

[mamselle]

Yikes!

Buy snowshoes?

M.