No No... I'm Still Alive

Hello!!!  I'm sure you thought I'd fallen off the face of the planet... It's not actually true.  However, I've been snowed under.  Only, unlike some of you, not with actual snow.  I've just been insanely busy!!!  However, I've now got my QMUL marks submitted, I've been to York for the Coloquium, and attended Claire and Russ' wedding, just to name a few.  In other words... it's now time to catch up with the PhD.

Essay Marking Blues

I collected the midterm essays on Monday. If that isn't depressing enough to make someone sing the blues, I don't know what is! I've finally realised the reason I got such good marks as an undergraduate. It had nothing to do with how well I understood the material, and everything to do with the grasp of punctuation usage! The prof was so pleased that s/he could follow the sentence from one end to another that s/he didn't actually care about the content. And I'm not even talking about complicated things like semi-colons and hyphens. I'm talking mastery of the full stop! Don't get me started on comma usage. *shudder* Would you believe that in this set I've actually had a submission which ends nearly every paragraph with . . . ? Yeah! No lie. Talk about a Dot, Dot, Don't.

I'm reminded of these comics from PhD Comics:



Fortunately, there was a remedy for my soul's anguish this week. Saturday was Down Home Blues night over in London. It's my favourite dance night in the month, and not just because I'm a Blues Junkie. It's awfully nice of them to put the venue across the street (literally) from the train station I arrive at! It's awfully nice not to have to travel the hour into London, and then an hour across London! Terribly decent of them to cater to my needs thus.

DONE!!! . . . 'Til Friday. *sigh*

I just finished marking the last essay for QMUL. It's taken me 2 weeks. Same amount of time I took for Essex. Not bad. Means I'm all done marking essays. At least . . . 'til Friday when I have to collect the final essays for QMUL. But I don't have to have them back 'til January! Yeay!! :)