Typical.

I am really very tired. Yesterday and Friday were both filled with day-long meetings, punctuated by depressing sandwiches.

- Ostensible utility: to prepare us for the demands of advising undergraduates, which are the very same demands as last year.

- Actual utility: to engender feelings of fellowship with students a few weeks from now when they are dying of boredom in our own lectures or of wretchedness when we make them do group exercises.

I think the worst part was when we were all forced to draw a "typical" Nerd U. student and then form "breakout groups" to discuss what we'd produced. I should have drawn a Rat King or a pygmy jerboa. (I especially like the bit where it falls off the scale.)

There was a nice interlude with the director of counseling services though. He seemed like a decent sort, as well as being rather attractive in a balding and crinkly-eyed way, and everyone perked up at the opportunity to talk about interesting things like cutting, sleep deprivation, and Adderall scrounging. Also he told us that of all the clinics they run, the most popular one they've ever offered has been the meditation group.

To appreciate the charm of this revelation, you have to understand that Nerd U. is largely populated by white male engineering students with special extra-large laptops for playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic on. When I am watching them die of boredom as I attempt to instruct them, I will think of them sitting zazen in counseling sessions. Then I will imagine them sitting zazen and falling off a giant scale, and I will forgive them.

Comments

[miranda]

a) oh god, i did not know that rat kings were real and i really did not want to see that picture of one

b) still not too late to draw such what you wish you had drawn (i think i recommend the jerboa though)

[Ray Davis]

Those sandwiches really are depressing, aren't they?

[redfox]

Miranda: They might not be real! It is a horrific photo, though. Sorry about that.

Ray: Indeed they are. Indeed they are.