PTSD

Some not entirely unrelated random things

1. Just because an issue is a stupid issue, and I fully admit that it is a stupid issue, do not assume that I will suddenly be able to ignore the issue. It's a nice idea, but not the way my life / brain / conversational style works. This is something that I'm beginning to feel I need to have printed on a t-shirt.

2. We may be able to turn our sudden obsession with Doctor Who into an interesting and useful professional exercise. Stay tuned to see if we can pull it off before certain upcoming deadlines. So far, the response has been encouraging.

3. If I get 200+ pages of text to edit on Monday, and my boss expects it to be done on Wednesday, am I still working a part-time job? What if I add the requirements from last week of 150+ pages of a new draft, typed and edited, between Monday and Friday? Plus notes from a six hour meeting the week before?

4. The tipping point for the attraction of random grad students to a group avoiding work by sitting in the sun and talking about anything *but* academia is an initial state of three students procrastinating. One person can be ignored, and two participants represent a stable state that attracts only students with a specific reason for joining the conversation, but three or more people means that every grad student within eyesight will, inevitably, gravitate to the conversation. The initial gravitation force cannot be overcome by any sort of deadline or impending meeting.

The ability of a particular grad student to reach an escape velocity and return to work is inversely proportional to the amount of work that needs to be done by that student divided by the number of days before the work is due. [1/V = W/T]

If the weather is *really* nice, W/T can be multiplied by a constant derived from temperature and relative sunniness of the afternoon.

If a professor is participating in the conversation, the reduction in necessary velocity is a complex function of a) the seniority of the professor; b) whether the student currently owes any written materials to said professor; and c) whether said professor has been known to engage students in discussions of theory while drinking beer at a conference.

The precise function required in this case may be one of the great unsolveable equations of the academic universe.

6. My new bag weighs the same amount empty as my old bag. Everything in my new bag came out of my old bag. So why does my new bag now feel twice as heavy as the old one?

7. There is a lot of fanfic about Doctor Who. A lot. An almost staggering amount. At the moment, I don't have time to read any of it.

posted by Elizabeth @ 9:24 PM