See Saw

[faustus]

I love my job

We had an Open Day on Saturday, which it was my turn to do. When I got to the room where we were meant to have a stall there were already twenty people waiting, which was kind of a pain, because at point all the questions they might have would be answered by the forty minute talk I was due to give at half past. I ran through an abbreviated version of the spiel and then ran to set up the talk.

The lecture theatre was full, and I relaxed into the talk fairly quickly - the desperately slow warming up of the computer allowing me to joke that that was all the time we had, and thank them for coming. I managed to get quite a few laughs, and the new Powerpoint seemed to work - I'd used the old one often enoguh, and it was simply remembering that all the course names had changed, and there were more of them. There were some tough questions, but I tend to answer honestly which gets me brownie points from parents.

Later I spoke to a number of potential students who said that after hearing the talk they wanted to do the Single Honours version of the programme rather than the joint. Result. I can do this shit.

I hate my job

We had an Open Day on Saturday, which it was my turn to do. When I got to the room where we were meant to have a stall there were already twenty people waiting impatiently and I had to go upstairs to sort out a notice for another room. Bear in mind I had no official notification of this event, since our names were put down in March in fact, and I hadn't been told I was doing a forty minute talk. I'd thought that I'd better print out a script as it was a new spiel, and of course I hit the wrong button so the computer ended up trying to print in colour (why does the do you know this is colour dialgue box have a button for change to colour, ignore or help but not abort abort dive dive dive?). It then took forever to cancel a 2 meg print job and... let's say I have an apology to make to a colleague.

The other issue - which was why I needed the notice - was that eighteen months back we decided to set up a new programme, and the person who knows about it is on leave. So far we have no more information than is in the prospectus. When we had the Open Day in June I'd tried to cancel this desk, but they wouldn't let me. I presumed they'd listen for now, but I had at least tried to get some up to date information.

So imagine, you've just driven two hundred miles, and paid seven quid for parking, to hear that a) I tell you anything except what is in the prospectus and b) it's not going to start until September 2008.

Quite. I would be too.

I can't do this shit.