I think that I've spent the last three days hoping that, if I just don't post to the blog, time will stop and tomorrow won't be our grad program orientation, followed shortly by our department's fall conference, followed quickly by our first administrative staff meeting, followed by the beginning of classes, in just. about. a. week.
How's that workin out for me? Not so well.
As many of you, not being members of the CCR program, will not know, next Monday is our annual orientation day for the graduate program. Typically, we schedule a couple of morning panels where faculty and more experienced graduate students speak to program issues. Past themes have included interdisciplinarity, getting started on your research, locating yourself materially and disciplinarily, etc. This year's theme is more of a life-oriented one--we're calling it "Balancing Acts" and asking speakers to talk about how to balance work with life, short-term duties with long-term plans, studenting with parenting, and so forth.
And what better game to go along with the theme of balance than Twister?
Except rather than actually using the names for limbs (left hand, right foot), you have to use epistemology, ontology, axiology, and teleology. And rather than calling out colors--how prosaic!--onlookers will read out passages from one of four rhetoricians. Finding the best position on the board is no longer simply a matter of physical quickness--only the intellectually quick will succeed! Yes, I bring you: Rhetorister!!
Or rather, I would have, had not the Semi-Official Ad-Hoc Subcommittee for Oversight of All Proposed Orientation Acitivity, Including but not Limited to Fun decided that perhaps this would not necessarily supply the rollicking good time that it appears to. Ah well. Back to the drawing board. (You can click for a closer look, though.)
That is all.
