Major in relaxing!

We noticed yesterday evening that in the nice glossy photograph of one of our profs. lecturing to a fancy big lecture hall on the cover of the new propaganda brochure for our major, there's a student apparently sleeping in the front row of said lecture hall.

First staff meeting

I attended my very first staff meeting of faculty yesterday. There I discovered, when the doors of the august conference room had swung shut, the lights had dimmed, and all students had scurried away (except for the grad student rep) that: Yes, the staff are all lizard people.*

Yes, once again, I was unknowingly hired by lizard people.
Tom: How could that happen again?
Me: ???
Tom: You should really ask them at the interview, "Are you lizard people?"
Me: It's so awkward, you know?
Tom: Now you have to help them take over the world.
Me: They are starting by trying to get elected as the junior senator from Minnesota. I don't know how to begin to explain to them that that's just going to be very, very tricky.
Tom: The worst part for you is that they truly do not understand how the government works.

*This "lizard people" myth is used by, among other people, an anti semitic guy. This blog rejects racism and anti semitism. Refer to comments section.

Oh, actually, I did have something to post about

Me: Wow, I am tired, and I don't know why! I'm just so tired. And I do not think I read that last email from the department administrator, about upcoming deadlines and stuff and forms we are supposed to fill out, but I will soon...
Dept. Chair/aka "my boss": You know, a lot of people just ignore those emails and those deadlines.
Me: Eh?
Dept. Chair: I mean, I am not saying that you should or anything. I am just saying, you know, that a lot of people just ignore them.

Actually did something (but did not get paid)

Hey, I actually did something for my new job. I was pretty excited about this. They asked me to do something professor-like; like, to evaluate something based on my expertise!

They asked the faculty email list to say which journal subscriptions the cash-strapped library should not cancel.

This required me to dig deep, really deep, into my extensive training, in order to say that no, our library should not cancel its subscription to Central European History.

I developed this process:

Ask self: Have you, or anyone you know, ever read, or felt like you/they ought to read, any article in any of the journals in question?

Example: Slavic Review--hmm, I think so-and-so had an issue of that kicking around his office--we better not cancel that one.

Task dispatched with aplomb!

In related news, recent nightmares include:

I'm in some seminar (as a participant) and a guy on the hiring committee walks in and sits in the back of the room. Then I realize that instead of pants, I'm wearing a bath towel.

I go into my first day of class and the students are so rowdy that I can't even say, "Hi, my name is..." and have to call security to have one particularly uncooperative girl dragged away. Oh, and I on top of it, I haven't finished writing the syllabus.