One week before the exams are due and the university has finally confirmed that, following a meeting with the local branch of the AUT, the exams will be going ahead as scheduled.
My revision has suffered from the uncertainty. Let’s see how much I can catch up in seven days.
The AUT action short of a strike continues. Exams start in eight days and we still don’t know if some or all are going to be cancelled. If they do go ahead, they may be missing questions by lecturers who are on strike even though we have told the university we do not want to sit partial exams. Revision is difficult to say the least.
The unions have taken us hostage and the university seems happy to regard our education as collateral damage. They acknowledge that exams may have to be delayed but they refuse to make that decision, reserving the right to let us know 24 hours before they are due in spite of repeated demands to give us more notice.
This is even worse for the part-time students who are taking time off work to sit exams that may not happen.
Whenever I use Windows, I really miss the power of the command line.
I’ve recently had to convert a number of wav files to mp3s. From bash it’s as simple as:
for i in *wav; do lame -h $i `echo $i | sed -e "s/wav/mp3/g"`; done
I’d hate to do that via a GUI.
Mark Smith, ladies and gentlemen of the press corps, Madame First Lady, Mr. President, my name is Stephen Colbert and tonight it’s my privilege to celebrate this president. We’re not so different, he and I. We get it. We’re not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We’re not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That’s where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say “I did look it up, and that’s not true.” That’s ’cause you looked it up in a book.
Mocking Bush is like shooting fish in a barrel, but to do it to his face takes a certain nerve. This Transcript of Stephen Colbert’s monologue at the White House Correspondents Dinner is hilarious. (Thanks Christian.)
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the AUT, accused universities and colleges of ignoring her request to return to negotiations.
“Unless we can get them to come and negotiate with us, those poor students are in danger of not graduating,” she told BBC Radio 4’s the World Tonight.
Am I the only one who feels sick when Sally Hunt talks about “poor students” and then blames everyone else but her fellow militants? Sally, you put the gun to our heads, you are the one holding us hostage and whatever sympathy I may have had for your cause went out of the window the minute you did so. The students who do support you are suffering from the Stockholm syndrome.
Sally Hunt is refusing to ballot AUT members on the latest pay offer, unilaterally deciding that it is not enough. Final year students are having their education sacrificed for her election campaign for leadership of the combined AUT / NAFTE unions next year. She and her fellow strikers are a disgrace to their profession.
Revising for finals is not being made any easier by the customers from the neighbouring pub who seem to regard a little good weather as an excuse to take the afternoon off work, get drunk and see who can shout the loudest, confusing, as idiots often do, being noisy with being witty.
The only time I don’t have to wear earplugs in my own home to concentrate is when it’s raining and since I can’t control the weather I thought I’d google for some creative common’s sound effects.
This thunderstorm may not drive the drunkards back to work but at least it helps drown out the sound of their braying, fake laughter and senseless cheering.