Goldfish and paracetamol

Annoying day in which I continually seem to be at the wrong end of the conversation and drift through the building in a puff of cluelessness.

Trains not working due to flooding on the line, so day starts with a nice comfy lift and chat with my hubby. Then again we need the extra time to clean up after poorly pussycats.

Help an Msc student with referencing. He has major problems with very basicv things. He claims never to have been aware of any of my classes though I ran several fir his group and know for a fact they were heavily promoted by academic ataff.  Where has he been all year? Why can students not extrapolate from examples to further instances. How many times do I have to demonstrate the order of names? He’s using a copyright online image without permission as well, so I open that can of worms right up.

Look at a colleague’s holiday photos from Australia. Miss most of the explanation of the picture where people’s feet appear to be being massaged by fish. Some sort of fish spa apparently. Always wondered what sushi was made of: clearly the answer is ‘little piggies’.

Attend 3 meetings relating to 3 different summer school programmes, and develop headache and mild panic about what needs done for all of these and what order they should be tackled in. Then again have a useful discussion with member of our academic support service, looking at what we are each covering and how it all fits together. This is definitely progress.

Won’t even broach the depressingly numbing topic of document storage management – manage to escape that meeting early as double booked.

Subscriptions and renewals just won’t behave and lead to team-wide headaches. No one ever sends the right or the complete information. Crucial people never where you want them and prices never what you expect. Gah. It’s a miracle we can get access to anything at the moment.

Lots bubbling under on the CDG front – submitting our ideas for the Umbrella conference programme; pulling together some last minute event reports for Impact (forced to resort to quoting this blog…)

The end of the day is in sight, am going to knock off shortly and take in a free tasting at the local deli, handily on the way to the station…

The unbearable lightness of cookies

Today the librarians bring home made food for a library workers’ buffet. We tell the assistants just to turn up and get fed and they seem to appreciate this. One colleague’s daughter has baked a sackload of raisin cookies, so we award her an honorary Higher to go with the rest of today’s exam results. Feel a bit sluggish all afternoon and wonder just what was in those cookies…

Meet with IT Training colleague to discuss what we are going to say in an hour’s teaching slot we’ve bagged on the PGCHET. Feeling singularly uninspired but then remember best remedy is plagiarism and ask another librarian whether I can beg borrow or steal an activity she did at a staff development event way back when.

Start to prepare sessions for the summer school that isn’t proper summer school – still don’t know whether I will have 5 or 25 students or which disciplines they will be covering. Programme is quite tight so despair over lack of time to fit much in. Even though apparently I talk fast.

Member of staff rings up with questions about Google Scholar. She has mysteriously found a PDF of an article to which we don’t subscribe… luck of the draw… good chance to tell her though that various current mysteries will be resolved soon and behold I bring all new subject guides to the portal.

Thinking I should really start looking at my next Presidential report for CDG tonight. Dashed off a quick book review for Scottish Division newsletter, Focus, this morning. Also making headway organising another Revalidation event – some folk are still registered for the process even though ultimately it is going to disappear and be replaced with a light touch CPD scheme.

Ah, constant change, what can you do?

Had we but world enough and time

A day of both unexpected progress and unforeseen setbacks.

That scary paper I was wrestling with? I sent a long email with lots of answers to the academic’s questions, and he is happy. The paper itself doesn’t need any further redrafting before its public debut. Result

Manage to send a few more emails by way of information literacy liaison. Most of the computing staff are away anyhow so no great hurry except that I would like my tasklist to major in black rather than red tasks.

Go to a rather confusing-yet-enlightening meeting about the summer school that is not the proper summer school but involves all the subject areas and and doesn’t have a name. The session I will be running for it is uncannily similar to the one for ‘proper’ summer school. Needless to say everyone wants to camp out in nice library teaching room for the duration of the entire fortnight-long performance. Explain at least six times that I can only take 25 students at a time…

Our local public library no longer has a complete set of British Standards. This is a major blow since they are our backup and we are currently between e-resources! “Oh bother” said Pooh.

Update the freshly minted library portal pages with the new Shibboleth URLs. Great phone call from an engineering colleague: ‘Amanda, what’s this thing beginning with S that I can’t pronounce?’