oh, my god, it's june.

[fox]

This means a number of things:

• closing date for applications for Junior Dean posts at Merton (where there are two positions, one called Welfare Dean -- think of a sort of meta-RA, for the Americans in the room -- and one called Deputy Principal of the Postmasters, which pleases me very much as that's the one I'm frankly more qualified for) and New College is tomorrow.  I have also yet to hear from St John's; I was not shortlisted at Brasenose, St Peter's, Harris Manchester, or Keble.  My supervisor suspects this is because they can't possibly know for sure that I'll be here next year, despite his prediction that I will be, until after I've taken the exams.  There may be something in that, although I suspect a couple more things may be at work; for BNC and St Pete's, I admit I wrote a frankly crap-ass cover letter.  I wouldn't have called me for an interview based on a resume and a cover letter that said "Hi, I want this job.  Resume enclosed.  References will follow from these people.  Let me know if you want me to send anything else!", so how can I blame them.  For the next round -- HMC, Keble, St John's -- I wrote a far superior letter, but Keble has two junior deans, a man and a woman, in two-year positions, with staggered hiring, and this year they're replacing the boy.  They couldn't say they were only interested in applications from men, obviously, but based on inside information, it appears their shortlist included one woman just so they could say they had a woman on the shortlist, so, whatever.  A friend of mine had a good interview with them, and I hope he gets it.  At Manchester, they said blah blah community of mature students so they're looking for a junior dean over 25, and I thought, hey!  I'm over 25!  And the majority of the Junior Dean corps around here tends to be Rhodes scholars, who are by statute not over 25, so at HMC I might actually have an edge.  Yeah, not shortlisted there either; we suspect that by 'over 25' they meant 'over 35', or, yes, we recognize that 'mature student' doesn't mean 'person who has been a student for eons', but 'person who was something else for eons and is a student now', and I don't meet that criterion.  (I worked for a few years, sure, but that was a job, not a career.)  So there's non-uncertainty-based explanations for all four shortlists I failed to get on.  But I haven't heard yet from SJC, like I said, so, hmm.  And I won't hear from Merton or New College until next week at the earliest.  Really want the Merton job.  Really really.  Anyone who knows influential people at Merton should please encourage them to hire me.
  
  
• closing date for nominations to the Student Representative Committee is tomorrow.  The Returning Officer informs me today that he's got nominations for Treasurer and Vice President, but not for Secretary or, crucially, President.  I had previously said that if and only if a) I don't get a Junior Dean job and b) there are no other nominations, I could be convinced to preside again next year.  This may have been the stupidest thing I've ever said.  The only good thing about being president again next year would be the line on my resume.  Okay, and I guess a little continuity never hurt anyone.  And it wouldn't suck quite as much as this year, because I won't be in the second year of a two-year degree next year -- I did point that out to people on Tuesday, that with the understanding that next year can't possibly be like this year, I'd do it if necessary, but this year all over again, not a chance.  Anyway, then I wrote back to the RO and quoted him the bit from 'Gone Quiet' where Josh goes into the Oval Office to ask Bartlet about The Question:

  Do you ever watch The West Wing? There's a bit in an episode some time in the third season, when President Martin Sheen is running for re-election and his most likely challenger, the senate majority leader, is asked at a press event why he wants to be president -- and completely blows the answer.  Worst answer anybody's ever heard. But after they're done celebrating, the White House staff realize they need a good answer for when the president himself is asked that question. They spend a lot of the episode trying to come up with good reasons why the sitting president would want to remain president, and then late in the hour, the Deputy Chief of Staff goes into the Oval Office (interrupting a meeting with an assistant defense secretary about a nuclear submarine that's gone missing off the coast of North Korea, by the way) and the following conversation takes place:
  
  JOSH: This can wait for another time.
  POTUS: No, give it to me now. I want a distraction.
  JOSH: No, it's all right, sir.
  POTUS: Give it to me.
  JOSH: It's campaign-related.
  POTUS: That's okay.
  JOSH: Well, the, uh, Majority Leader got the question last night.
  LEO: He tanked.
  JOSH: Yeah, and we're starting to put together an answer for when you get it.
  POTUS: The question?
  JOSH: Why do you want to be president?
  POTUS: I don't.
  JOSH: Well, we'll put that in the hopper and show you a draft.

  
  
  
• my exams provisionally begin on 15 June, but I don't know for sure, nor do I know which exam will be on which day from 15-17 June, because my timetable has not yet been published by the Exam Schools.  They have a disclaimer at the top of their website:

  The timetabling of examinations carried out by Schools has recently been held up by unanticipated staff shortages. Schools works to a commitment to publish timetables on the Examinations pages of the University website five weeks in advance, and to issue individual timetables to students two weeks in advance. There is currently a delay of up to two weeks in the web-publishing of timetables for some examinations scheduled to commence in or after 5th week. The Schools staff are working hard to retrieve[sic] this situation, which should improve within the next fortnight. All individual timetables will continue to be issued to students with two weeks' notice. Students should be reassured that there is unlikely to be any significant alteration to the provisional start-dates already issued for their examinations.

  My provisional start date is Thursday 8th week, so Schools was 'working to a commitment' to publish the timetable for my subject by Thursday 3rd week; that obviously didn't happen, but the two-week delay would have got them to Thursday 5th week.  It is now Thursday 6th week, and the timetable is still not there, nor has the disclaimer been modified, which is what really ticks me off.  I wrote to their enquiry e-mail address the other day to say, basically, Nu?, and got back a standard 'we're working on it'.  I haven't the faintest idea what can be so hard about making timetables; we had to register to take the exams in October (I have a confirmation of exam entry pinned to my noticeboard, dated 1 November 2005), so it's not like there's been a rush.  So I'm unhappy about that.  I ran into the Clerk to the Proctors at the pub the other night and asked him what would happen if a person didn't get her timetable with the promised two weeks' notice, and he said actually there's no statutory requirement that anyone have any advance notice at all, so that's fun.  What could be more exhilarating than rolling up to Schools at 9am on the provisional start date, only to learn that they moved the start date a day earlier but didn't tell anyone, and everybody on your course has failed the exam?  That wouldn't make MORE WORK FOR THE PROCTORS or anything.
  
  
• It's half-term at the cathedral school, which means the B-team choir has been called off the bench.  This is good, but also, angh.  It kicks up other issues I'd rather not be dealing with right now.  Have reached a decision, though, based on events of Tuesday night, which is:  for the rest of my life, unless it's being served with dinner, I am not drinking red wine, ever.  A glass and a half of that stuff and I'm dizzy and sick and need to be steered home and taken care of, and that's just not on.  Poison.  No more.
  
  
• I've been coughing unpleasantly much.  Fortunately, the [tmi] gunk I've been coughing up has not been of alarming hue.[/tmi]  Still, it's making me cross, not to be able to breathe when and as I please.
  
  
• In short:  I'm ready to take these exams and get the hell out of here.  I need a vacation, and I'm in a state where values of 'vacation' include 'my parents' house in the suburbs of Cleveland'.  I have a confirmed itinerary for 1 July.
  
  
• Oh, that reminds me:  I know I have a confirmed itinerary for 1 July because my father had Continental Airlines e-mail it to me, despite my multiple previous pleas never to click the 'e-mail this page to a friend' link on any website, ever, but either to send me the URL or to copy and paste the information into an e-mail he could then send me himself.  So I had to yell at him about that, including 'I know we've talked about this before', and his only response was 'Well, I forgot.  I always get my confirmations by e-mail messages.'  I haven't bothered yet to say to him, Yes, and you also get UNGODLY CARTLOADS of spam, don't you?, and do you think there might possibly be a connection between these facts?, especially given the fact that the spam-vulnerability is the main reason advanced by both of your children every time they've asked you not to do that?  GAH!
  
  
• But on the up side, the book my college library said was overdue has now been demonstrated to have been on their shelves the whole time.  So they've marked it as returned and I am no longer delinquent.  Yay.