new toy

I am always smiling indulgently at Craig for his "gear fetish". New bits of electronica and guitar make their way into our house with considerable regularity. But I am beginning to see that my "outdoor" thing is of the same ilk.
Here are pics of last week's cross country ski outing after which I bought my own boots, skis and poles. Heaven. Pics to follow.

Show off

My mum provides an excellent definition of apostille in her comment to my earlier post. I had never seen the word until it began to crop up in my professional listserv in discussions of student visas to Russia. There was panic that the russkys were actually enforcing some of their more arcane visa rules one of which required getting an apostille on each student's application documents (including, may I note, and HIV test certificate). Said apostille must be issued by the lieutenant governor of the great state of Utah. As if I don't have anything better to do than behave like some 19th century penitent traveling to the seat of power to receive benediction on my documents...

more from the front lines of academic job searches

So, the first candidate for one of our positions (don't ask how we are actually hiring in this economy) was featured in an earlier post. The competitor arrived today. Remember that these candidates are picked by a search committee who weeds through dozens of files, conducts numerous video conference interviews, and, finally, settles on the cream of the crop for the much coveted 'campus visit'. And we saw how that worked out with bachelor/ette number 1... I will meet number 2 tomorrow, but by all advance measures, it promises to be a spectacular crash and burn. Despite the fact that this is a position for a particular language/literature area, half the search committee members were not in that area (we like to diversify since we are a diverse department). Nonetheless everything indicates that the English of this candidate is not firing on all cylinders. We do not discriminate against the linguistically challenged - lord knows I have many of them in class every day -- but we do have a minimal expectation that a person can lecture/teach/interact in his or her language of choice or origin AND in English. Having seen the bio and talk blurb the person sent in advance (person "enjoys listen music") I jokingly predicted that s/he would show up planning to give the job talk not in English. Lo and behold, candidate emailed a copy of the talk to my better administrative half this morning and IT IS NOT IN ENGLISH. He assured me that he would telling the candidate that this was not ok, so tomorrow I anticipate a poorly translated talk given by a bleary eyed misfit.

Hmmmm, might be the perfect addition to what Craig terms "the island of misfit toys" aka my department.

your new word for the day is...

apostille.

I've said it before....

But now I really have seen it all. Just finished doing the standard 45 minute chair talk with job candidate. Towards the end got round to the canonical "so what interests you about this job" question. The response: "Nothing," pause, well, I have family out here. Silence.
Folks, I think we have a winner.

I've found my people

Today I joined my "stretching for the inflexible" class. It is one of the classes run through the university for faculty and staff and I couldn't resist the title. I had missed the first two class sessions because of work (grrrr), but it turns out that didn't matter. I was by far not the most inflexible one in the room. It felt lovely.

Input with no output

I enjoy reading a blog by a community college dean. He seems to chime in with surprisingly good timing on topics that prey on my administrative mind. A few months ago I (and a few friends I forwarded it to) enjoyed his post on the curious desire of many faculty members to be spared any in-the-trenches sort of work and their concurrent insistence that they be consulted on everything. This is particularly evident in the summer months when the right of total absence is asserted followed by shock when come September, departmental life has marched on. Attempts at consultation enter an email vacuum. I am amazed by the number of people who swear that they don't have email access in whatever nook or cranny they hide in over these months. Last time I checked even Budapest and Spain have the internet and internet cafes. This week someone assured me that they had had no access to email in New York. Yea, and your check is in the mail.
This evening has seen a delightful exchange in which a faculty member has taken umbrage at the addition of a course to the spring schedule without their input. Never mind that in the weeks of the fall semester we took on the full weight of supervising, training, cajoling etc. in the area that the person now feels has been usurped. Here is the quote:
"I feel that my rights as a faculty have been violated." Hmmmm. There seems to be a word missing after 'faculty'. Could it be "in absentia"?