Thus far, the challenges of the term:
- keeping the music down so as not to disturb the Religious Studies person next door. Honestly, the music is no louder than it was before. It's interesting that her complaint was about the type of music (I had The Roots on low), and her description was that it was "that bump-da-bump bump music."
- all the computers IT have updated with Vista in the classrooms completely freeze when the screen saver kicks in. The IT person I spoke with described this as a very limited problem with minimal impact. This has prompted my suggestion for a new slogan for our university: "University X: Hiring University X Graduates No One Else Will Have"
- a more general battle against the "because it's already here" sort of logic that inflicts this place in terms of hiring has overtaken me. Granted, we're in a crappy place and luring people from elsewhere to here is one of our big hiring challenges, but still...
- how to tell students I'm writing reference letters for that the programs they're applying to are a waste of their talents (including one student whose announcement that he intends to apply to a program here at University X was as close as I've come to having my skin literally crawl)
