The Annual Blindside

[faustus]

There is usually some unexpected disaster on the first day of term that throws me - and this year it is a pulled muscle from Saturday's walk. I can walk - after a fashion - and it is better than yesterday, but it definitely doesn't want to bend properly. I've applied a spray, and ointment and taken antihistamines and paracetemol and am trying to keep it raised.

Am seeing the doctor tomorrow.


I always said exercise was bad for you.

Comments

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Sympathies. I generally take ibuprofen for muscular things, but the main thing is to get enough pain relief to function (gently!).

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I have an ibuprofen gel I've used.

It's eased enough so I can almost climb stairs with both legs but I'm tempted to cancel Thursday's teaching.

[kayxh.livejournal.com]

There is usually some unexpected disaster on the first day of term

They're called students.

Hope the muscle heals soon - walking it's bad for you.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

To be fair - for once - it's more often the Powers That Be in relation to the students: the screwed up timetabling, the failure to give us accurate registers (before Monday we either had 130 or 100 warm bodies), not being told about a wheel chair user and scheduling induction in a building without a lift...

[kayxh.livejournal.com]

As a Power that Is all I can say it's not easy.

My best estimate as to how many students we can expect in two weeks time is somewhere between 170 and 204. I found an extra 6 yesterday when checking a list.

Timetabling would be easy if it wasn't for academic staff and their unreasonable demands of not wanting to teach on two consecutive days, not wanting to teach on before 10, not thinking to tell anyone this before the timetable is drawn up...

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Timetabling is our fault - we do the three dimensional chess stuff, the secretary enters it into the timetabling software and then - ho ho ho - all is done. Or not, more likely. But supposibly the software does it automatically.

Actually the timetabling I was particularly thinking of was for the induction day, where single honours students end up at the combined talk and vice versa, and when we say "They told you about ..." we get blank faces. On the other hand it looks as if we've timetabled something on a Thursday which should be a Tuesday and nobody noticed, despite that putting a member of staff in two places at once.

I don't know whose fault it is, but it seems the the QL software gives two answers depending on how you ask the question. At the quarterly datachecks we forward a list of non-existent or left students to Registry (we cannot change data) for removal from the lists. Many of these names make it through all the data checks in the year, and we get told off. It's our responsibility to make sure the data is accurate even though we cannot personally do anything to change or correct it.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

Hot water bottle or bag of frozen peas. Just don't leave the peas on for too long.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

As far as I can see - without visits to the out of town Morrison, Sainsbury's and ASDA - the town is free of frozen peas. Frozen corn, ditto. In fact the only frozen veg Tescos had was broccoli, which I'm not sure would have the same effect.