Are you offended?

 I've had plenty of occasion to think about 'offence', largely because I have been on the internet once or twice. The most recent event to bring me back to the concept is the furore around this year's PROSH magazine. Drunk naked West Australian uni students hit the streets to sell racist hate-speech has got to be in the top 10 of headlines your average Vice-Chancellor would not want to have to deal with.

Vivat academia! Vivant professores!

So, I graduated yesterday.

Top of the World

So, I went on holiday. I had an unforgettable weekend in Kathmandu: it was noisy and messy and at times very confronting, but my local friend was an excellent guide and was really able to show how to appreciate Nepal. Here's a taste, but you should go, go, go.

The PhD Movie

The PhD Movie came to Perth this week and was shown in joint UWA/Curtin screenings on Thursday, with proceeds going towards supporting Indigenous literacy programs. It's always a bit odd watching films in a lecture theatre - more like watching a really big TV with a bunch of people you don't know - but it was an appropriate setting for the film.

Being and Not-Being Smart

At a recent gathering of like-minded postgrad lady folk we got to the topic of being, and not being, smart. Specifically the kind of smart that makes one postgrad or academic stand out from the rest: we can assume some basic level of intelligence in the cohort as a whole, but there are some people who make the rest of us wistfully sigh with an envious "She's really smart (not fake-smart like me or even normal-smart like him)."

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.

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.

For she's a jolly good fellow...

Today was a somewhat sad day: my buddy Sandra is moving back to Germany, so we had a last quick catch-up at uni with lots of friends. Sandra and I met at a scholarships information session the year before we started our studies, we've been office neighbours all this time, lived along the same street for a while (okay, so it's a long street), did the teaching Internship and worked on Limina at the same time, and we both had Big things happen to us last year. I've met lots of charming, witty and sparkly people through her and my postgrad experience has been better for her presence.

Perth will be a gloomier place without Sandra.



(on an unrelated, but cheerier note: Sebastian curled up to sleep tonight cuddling... a spoon.)