2009-03-26 - 11:18 a.m.

...oh lordy it's all back...

The end of the week is near, and I am facing (a) lots of grading (b) lots of committee work (c) a three-hour thesis defence, and (d) lots of meetings with students. Sigh. Last week I was SO excited to be ignoring all of that stuff and therefore to be working on my OWN stuff. Such luxury comes at a cost. This week. ugh.

Today's meeting is particularly dreaded. I hate to say this but my trust and goodwill towards this particular student has been severely damaged. I am a supervisor of someone who does not understand (or does not wish to listen to) my advice - I cannot tell if this person just doesn't want to listen to me or if s/he is truly incapable. I think it is a combination of both, but there is definitely an authority issue. Unfortunately this person has lied to me about funds - holding down a full-time job while I paid out a fellowship - which I find so offensively dishonest and unethical that I'm finding it difficult to put any effort at all into this work. As I said, my goodwill has been lost. So now I am reading the text of department guidelines very carefully to ensure that I follow the letter of the law in terms of my duties. A minimal approach (that still sucks up major amounts of time). Sigh.

***

We are back in the TMI zone so some of you can just stop reading right now. I said it was coming. I was right. I woke up this morning, said "holy begeezus," and went downstairs to gobble down two ibuprofen as I rummaged through the back of the bathroom closet for those feminine things that I haven't needed in over a year. Ibuprofen have become my diet of the day. K's response - "so that's why you've been so.... (pause while he very delicately tries to choose just the right word that is going to offend me anyway) ...DIRECT for the last couple days." Anyway, so far the ibuprofen is working - just making me a little bit foggy and adding to my sense of resignation that this is going to be a day whether I want it to or not. Maybe not a bad way to go into this dreaded meeting today.