Onwards and upwards

Over the past couple of days I've been toying with the idea of applying for a job. I won't go in to the details of said job, but it exactly the sort of project-based research/writing position I think I'd be excellent at, and it looks as though the hours could be fairly flexible, so it would suit me fantabuloriffically. Of course, there are the complicating factors of Thesis and Baby.

On Plan B

Today I direct you towards a blog post by one of my more sparkly and spectaculoriffic conference buddies, Phil. Phil went to the (in?)famous Screen conference in Glasgow, and had an underwhelming time - a neat contrast to another friend who went a couple of years earlier and experienced/witnessed exactly the sort of mean nastiness Phil refers to.

How hung is your parliament?

Australia had a federal election on Saturday. It was always going to be a close call, but it's so very, very close that we still don't know who won.

What I learned at UWA Expo

The university expo was on yesterday, and I did about an hour or so of leaflet-distribution and question-answering.

I died a little on the inside when one person asked these two questions:

"What kind of a job do you get at the end of it?" (What with Arts being a vocational course an' all...)

followed immediately by

"Is it hard or is it a fairly relaxed course? It's just that, if you have to, you know, do lots of things it's probably not for me"

Sigh.

The one where I discover I'm a fox.

So the semester has well and truly started, and my tutorials are going well so far. Rather predictably the teaching has taken up all my thesis writing time, and it has been weeks since I've even opened the document. What I also knew would happen, because it always has done, is that once I start teaching I start gravitating towards doing research in the teaching field. So for the moment my mind buzzes with research projects related to classic fairy tales, or perhaps even Star Wars (because of the monomyth connection). When I taught Kalevala and national romanticism, I was all about that, and I still think I might one day do a bit more of an exploration of the "Kalevala process". When I teach first-year contemporary Europe topics I go all giddy about EU expansion and integration - that at least I've been able to channel into my Eurovision Song Contest project, which I now solemnly swear I will submit by the end of the year. The Communciation& Culture survey unit, with Habermas and medieval processions and whatnot got me going on urban space and nostalgia, censorship and pedagogy.

Showers easing, Apocalypse unlikely.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane to a time more innocent, exciting and soggy: March 22nd, 2010.

Today is a quiet day. One hopes.

Okay, so it turns out that fifteen hours in a gym with a ten-month-old is a looooong day. Particularly when said ten-month-old decided the day should really start at 3am. Even so, it was a good day: Ben placed in the top eight, we caught up with lots of people and finished the day with some exceptional pizzas - Little Caesar's catered at the venue in the evening (warning: the website plays loud music).

En Garde!

I'm doing some final preparations for tomorrow's tutorials - I'm teaching again this semester, and following a year's worth of not-teaching it feels a bit weird. The feeling isn't helped by the fact that I'll be teaching in the Social Sciences building. I'll be on unfamiliar terrain, beyond the car park!

Release the Policy Nerd!

I'm the ultimate multi-tasker: I'm having a cup of tea, knitting, listening out to hear whether Sebastian is snoring/vomiting (we've had a rough night behind us...), and trawling through the publication search of the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. I like reports and policy statements far more than may be healthy.