Best Hoodie Ever

This arrived earlier in the week, accompanied by a £3 customs charge and an £8 swindlinghandling fee from Royal Mail. It is most awesome.

 
You can order them online from Mouthman. I ordered a large, which is a little big on me.

If only I didn't look like a complete wazzock wearing it then I could include this as part of my teaching wardrobe...

An Exciting Development

Paul's favourite pastime in the summer is hunting for slugs and snails after dark, dropping the slugs into the beer trap and pitching the snails overarm into the car park behind the house. I was sitting outside with a cup of tea while he went about his duties, when I heard "Oh my god! Julia, come here!". I went over to the steps down to the basement, and saw what his torch was illuminating:


This is one of a pair of common newts, Triturus vulgaris, which seem to have taken up residence in the garden. I'm a little puzzled, as I would have thought by now they were in full-on breeding season, and they're still very much terrestrial. But I do wonder if my tiny terracotta pot pond with its two plants (lizard's tail and horsetail) would make a suitable newt hatching ground!

I shall keep a look out, and have suggested that Paul stops collecting slugs from the steps, so the newts have plenty to eat. It means sacrificing my deciduous Magnolia leaves for the third year in a row, but worth it to see some vulnerable animals doing well in Jurassic Park.

Things I Learned From My Students #5: Pre-Exams Edition

The kids are starting to get scared about the exams. This is probably A Good Thing given that the GCSEs start this Friday. So here are some more nuggets of wisdom gleaned from the pre-exam scramble.

1. There is a mythical goal called "Finishing The Syllabus" that few if any teachers attain comfortably.
   
2. Even if you do manage to finish your syllabus the exam board will find a way to screw you over by putting the last module you covered first in the timetable so the poor kids have barely any time to revise it.
   
3. Students aren't very good at spotting trends, and will predict the next in the sequence A A A A A A A A A as D.
   
4. There will come a time when students just kind of give up on doing homework.
   
5. There will come a time when said students just start laughing when you mention the idea of homework.
   
6. Despite doing a Spearman's Rank Correlation on the grades acquired by the students versus the number of pieces of homework submitted, you will find no link and be forced to concede defeat.
   
7. I'm one of those teachers who has vowed never to let a student down or to be the limiting factor in their progression.
   
8. This means I'm spending a lot of time being let down by students.
   
9. We really really need to keep our comparative anatomy collection.
   
10. I'm getting a reputation as "that teacher who carries around animal skulls all the time".
    
11. I like that reputation.
    
12. Every class thinks they're the worst class I teach. Except the class that is actually the worst.
    
13. Using the Venganza pirates-versus-temperature correlation graph to make a point can result in a fascinating conversation with some Somali lads who are very proud of their nation's long tradition of piracy.
    
14. No student ever gets tired of watching birds of paradise doing their mating dances.
    
15. Your responsibilities are far from over when they've finished the course and left college.

I doubt any of my kids read the blog, but if they are, here is a message for them:

You know more than you think you do. You are capable of everything you set your heart on. Read the goddamn question before you answer it.

Good luck kiddlywinks!

Election Hangover

Today I have felt like ass. In case you've been under a rock (or possibly only getting your international news from Fox), yesterday was the UK General Election. Paul and I stayed up last night until our constituency was called, just after 6am. I was in class lecturing at 9am. My students noticed that I was welded to my supermassive insulated coffee mug (thanks Usch - still one of the most useful presents I've had), and my colleagues noticed that I could benefit from about 20 hours of sleep.

I am bitterly disappointed. The Lib Dems did not manage to translate their popularity into votes, and because the First Past The Post system is ridiculous, the absolute votes do not translate into a representative number of seats. So nationally it's a tragedy. Locally, in my constituency, not only did Andrew Dakers come third to the Conservatives and the outgoing Labour MP, but the poor man lost his Council seat. For a representative who has campaigned tirelessly for local issues, this is a terrible blow. And finally, the Lib Dems' science champion Evan Harris has lost his seat too. A sad day for those of us who were buoyed up by the vastly superior science policies of the Liberal Democrats.

I'd put links in the above paragraphs, but I am too exhausted. I remember, back in 2004, being at SVP in Denver, flying in on Election Day - there was a party atmosphere and the largely Democratic-voting SVP attendees were rooting for Kerry-Edwards. The next day, with Dubya still in power, I saw broken men and women. Still in my mind is a conversation Paul and I had with Matt Lamanna, where he said he could not remember an time he had invested so much time, money and emotion in an election, and he was simply devastated. He echoed what most of his fellow countrymen at the conference felt. This morning Paul said "Now I understand how Matt felt".

It remains to be seen what solution is reached through this hung parliament. I'll reserve my comments on individual policies until I see who's in and who's out. I'm distressed by the reports that people were turned away from polling stations last night, and not least because there are claims that students were separated out from "real" residents and those residents given priority in the queues. A couple of my students today said they tried to register to vote but were never sent polling cards, and when they went to the polling station they were not on the electoral roll.

Tomorrow, Paul and I are going to our first protest, organised by the Take Back Parliament movement. Maybe we're too old for this protesting lark, but damnit we feel strongly about this. David Cameron got one thing right in his election campaign: We Can't Go On Like This.