Day: October 24, 2019

Every November, parents at Klara’s school volunteer to bring breakfast / lunch / desserts on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. There are 30 employees in the school.

One of the shi-shi fru-fru moms volunteered to bring $8 juices from the local fancy juicery for every employee. That’s $240 in juices. I have a sneaking suspicion that she’s not going to get a reaction she’s angling for.

A fresh joke from Ukraine:

Year 3129. The British Prime Minister makes a yearly pilgrimage to Brussels to ask for a delay for Brexit. Nobody knows how this tradition started but every year it attracts a multitude of tourists from all over the world.

Not that anybody expects the UK to survive that long given how things are going.

What I don’t get is why the Disability Office conceals not only the nature of a student’s disability but often even the existence of a disability. I discovered today that a certain student who’s been difficult has a disability. If I had known this from the start and known what it is (which I still don’t), I would have used a completely different strategy with the student.

I have no idea what the justification behind the concealment is. That a disability is shameful? That professors would be mean to people once we discover they are disabled?

The administration is proposing that we amp up our research category to R-2 (we are currently a pathetic R-3). But it looks like the idea will come to nothing because the “it’s always been this way” dusty oldsters are getting all pouty again.

A colleague’s book got a write-up in the leading Spanish newspaper. I got a medal. A friend at another department is creating breakthrough stuff in chemistry. We have people doing some pretty cool things. But we don’t get recognized or even noticed because it’s all about who can come up with a more ingenious way to push as many students as possible over the graduation line irrespective of whether they actually know anything. It’s all about selling illusion, and it’s tiresome.

We are losing great people because this system only works for those who want warm, comfortable stagnation.