Today I am:

• Annoyed that I hit ‘cancel’ instead of ‘snooze’ this morning and missed pilates.
• Sore from tae bo (which is SO much fun, even if it still gets me too hyped to sleep).
• Loving the idea of Operation Beautiful, and thinking very seriously about startng to participate.
• Actually getting work done (hence bullet-list vs real post).
• Excited to be unleashed onto a fresh batch of first-years tomorrow *evil cackle* if they only knew…
• Sick of annoying undergrad O-week noise. Vuvuzelas are SO not hot right now…
• Amused by the first-years who always dress up like crazy for the first week, then have loud conversations about how few clothes they have (wearing a school uniform Monday to Friday made it easier) and then become normal people.
• Shocked by how many new students are walking around with their parents. Registration was last week, it’s time to let go…
• Missing holiday traffic
• Nervous to be doing real teaching, but excited too. I get a Real, Teacher-style desk!!!
• Nauseous from the welding-smell coming in from the passage. what’s scary is that nobody seems to know what they’re welding or why, but we live with it.

Yip, it’s January on campus!

On the plus side, they’ve started baking donuts again, so we’ll get a donut-day this week!

Ink-blot tests

So marking undergrrad drawings is somewhat like doing inkblot tests. I had to mark drawings of worms which looked like breakfast, maps, basketball courts, not to mention the longitudinal sections which get unbelievably phallic... Luke in the bakground, gigglng at Engrish.com doesn't really help.

At the same time I'm marking the second years who had to answer questions about birds. Here are some of this year's gems:

Eagles eat kids

Flamingos squeeze food in their tongue
The also eat by using their erectile tissue

Flamingos are pink so that they're camouflages amongst the flamingos (circular much?)

Birds eat anything they can get their claws on (I'm quoting here)

A flightless bird other than an ostrich is a volstruis (i.e. there are ostriches and afrikaans ostriches)

Parrots have great muscle

The kneecap is known as the photata

Ostriches are totally flghtless because they have bone marrow

And of course the classic: Owls eat lawns at night. Sometimes even hedges.

And they say that teaching is boring?

I suck at chess

From time to time I cycle between narcolepsy (I have friends who can verify this after I fell asleep on a beach, in a car, on a chair, on floor several times during one weekend) and insomnia. I think a lot of this is stress-based, when I am stressed I just don't sleep, but prefer lying in bed paying out worst-case scenarios across my ceiling (I stuck glow-in-the dark stars up there too, but without my contact lenses all I can see if a greenish-yellow haze).

Last week, while I was really battling with insomnia, I downloaded a chess application to my phone and decided to pass those very long 2am-6am hours playing against my phone. I lost. Badly. And continued to lose. I had it set on easy, but I swear that thing is like the chess grandmaster thing like that AI program that beat the real chess master and really freaked out everyone! It's been a long time since I played chess, and the time during which I was any good at strategizing only really lasted about 3 months as nobody around me really plays it, but still!

As the days passed I felt my playing improve and I lasted longer into each game before quitting in a huff, but I still couldn't beat it. The insomnia worsened as I couldn't sleep without paying at least one game at night, which often stretched into several hours of battling a stupid cellphone app. One day I pulled out an old chess board and set up the game on there - I found being able to move pieces around in real life made strategizing easier - and did quite well until I made one tiny little mistake and the machine totally destroyed me!

By the end of last week I was exhausted and jittery and drinking WAY too much coffee and still losing. And we had to head off on field trip with a bunch of undergrads. To be honest, it was an easy trip, with 3 lecturers, the two of us and about 20 students. The lecturers stayed in chalets and we stayed in a tent to keep an eye on the kiddies.

Things I learned:

1. I am getting old/growing up. While this group of students was more immature than most, I found myself feeling increasingly different from them - the good old alone-in-a-crowd feeling.
2. I really cannot handle being around people all the time anymore. I ended up taking a walk at 1am on the Saturday night just to have breathing space.
   Although the men's showers are way cleaner than the ladies (for once) it is not advisable to sneak in and use them in case a bunch of men decide to queue outside your shower stall and discuss their personal lives.
3. Taking a random hike without students attached is a lot of fun!
4. My sleeping bag, while largely waterproof, lets water in around the zip.
   It rained, the tent leaked, I woke up with a soaking pillowe and wet feel, but a remarkably dry torso!
5. My new camera is totally awesome and I'm finally getting the hang of it (bear in mind this was first real opportunity to take it out and play around with the settings) although I have a LONG way to go!
6. The students who appear to be self-sufficient and enthusiastic in class are actually extremely annoying, particularly if they include a pair of severely over-competitive siblings.

Anyway here are some of my photos from the weekend. nothing too exciting but better than another weekend in the city!

A lizard, because I can! This little guy was adorable, maybe about 5cm long -including the tail! I'm totally saving up for a macro lens!

A frog, i don't know what the commong name is, but he was very cute. It was ouring with rain and a student who had caught him let him go and I dashed out for literally 5 seconds and caught him and ended up soaked - it looked like I had jumped into a swimming pool rather than just stepping outside!

A pretty view with a river running between two koppies

A fig tree, doing some pretty awesome weird stuff on a cliff.

A photo of Luke taking a photo. The students are being industrious.

Playing around because I could.

I have a vague idea that this is a Pelia something-or-another fern. We've always called it the cute fern because it's pretty adorable! By the end of the first day the students were calling it that too!

a caterpillar the size of a large rodent. It was HUGE! We thought it was a rat caught in a tree at first. We saw several of them on this trip, but I think the first one was the coolest. AMinly because I saw it first!

A very cool swallow nest with different coloured mud.

Our intrepid students returning from a collecting expidition in the big scary grassland!

Does anyone else see a face in the rocks?

Playing at the river. I didn't take my tripod that day and ended up balancing my camera on my lap to try keep it steady. Not fantastic, but I got the effect I was going for whch makes me happy!

The coolest classroom in the world!

When something new is something old, but also entirely new...

So on Sunday night the nerves set in a little bit. I was ok, handling everything as I do, when my family forced me to do another trial run in front of them. So I got the notes and the pictures and proceeded to go through it all again. And they sat and blinked at me. It was awful! Like talking to a brick wall or something. I know back in the day when they were studying it was much more formal and interacting in class was totally frowned upon, but really! Even when I asked direct questions they just stared blankly.

Then I figured out at about 4am that I had a stomach bug (I will spare the details) and basically ended up staggering in on Monday morning having had about two hours of sleep and feeling like I was about to pass out.

Everyone at the lab (including the lecturer who I was teaching for) thought that I was about to collapse from an awful state of nerves. In a fit of solidarity they decided to wait until I was finished to make coffee (coffee makes me talk faster) and Luke and Megan and I headed upstairs to set up.

I was very lucky in that the first half involved them watching a video and answering questions which gave me time to calm down a bit, and then I gave them a break and got started.

And it wasn't too bad! It was the weirdest feeling, to be talking to a room full of people who are quiet and taking notes, but at the same time it wasn't weird at all. After the first few minutes I forgot that I was supposed to be nervous and I was more frustrated when they weren't participating enough. For the record, the obnoxious show-offs in the front row? Lifesavers! And towards the end they got more involved and I got through everything and I even let them go early.

So in a fit of bravery, I decided to give the next lecture, yesterday. With only one day to plan and not really understanding how to teach the stuff without it being boring and Luke being off getting a gangrenous limb checked out by the doctor, it was a little bit more nerve-wracking, but they were way more involved and it was a lot of fun, except that the loudmouths starting getting a bit difficult, but until the last five or so minutes they were fantastic and I enjoyed it. And to their credit, the last five minutes was just before lunch and I don't blame them for being a bit fidgety.

So that was my amazing lecturing debut! It was actually not bad at all and I'd like to do more someday (although not right now, my research is suffering under my teaching load already), but at the same time it wasn't very different to the teaching I've been doing in the labs for the last 5 years! It helped that I knew the students from labs and that there were only about 70 of them, rather than the huge first-year classes of a few hundred. And I had the awesome moral support of Megs and Luke, and the support form the lecturer who trusted me enough to let me teach his classes without forcing me to let him sit there which would have been WAY too much pressure!

And there was the little issue when the chalkboard got stuck and I have to do some fancy stances to try to move it...

So that's it, I'm alive, it's over and I don't feel like I've really done anything new! Except that in a fit of insomnia last night/this morning I downloaded a chess game on my phone and I can't beat it! It's driving me crazy!

Rejected...

So I was youtubing the Flight of the Conchords and I saw the song ‘Rejected’ and laughed like I haven’t in years. As it’s stuck in my head at the moment I figured I’d use it as a title.

Random stuff aside, the reason I’ve been so quiet lately is that, besides the usual insane load of labs I have to teach in at the beginning of each year, I decided that I need the experience and agreed to do some lecturing for one of the courses. The scary part is that it’s tomorrow and it’s on a topic that I’m not particularly clued-up on!

On the plus side I got the materials over a month ago and I’ve had plenty of time to prepare, and I have actually been preparing, albeit slowly. It’s just scary because I’ve never done it before! I’m not afraid of the kids- I’ve failed enough of them over the last few weeks that I don’t really have to worry about my authority being in question, and the field trip is only next weekend so they haven’t yet seen me half asleep, cranky and clutching at my coffee-cup as if it’s the only thing keeping me alive (I love camping, really, but teaching and camping at the same time is exhausting, particularly when it includes trying desperately to avoid seeing the lecturer in charge in his underwear… true story!)

The lecturer who traditionally runs this section has also been amazingly supportive, he’s talked me through lecturing styles, points to focus on, ways to avoid being boring (lets hope!) pacing… and we went to one of his lectures last week to get an idea of how to approach talking to 70-odd rather stupid children. So I was feeling fine!

To tell the truth by Friday the people around me were displaying several signs of nerves and freaking out on my behalf, and I was feeling calm and confident and generally ok. Then last night I went over the plans one more time and then did a trial lecture to Lara.

For the record, Lara is the most awesome friend in the world*! She is now a lawyer who is totally clued up on rodent diversity, and she listened and participated and asked questions (including sticking her hand up and going “Ooh! Ooh!” in a way that was creepily reminiscent of my students) and she pointed out things that I would have forgotten.

1.This is something I know, but most of my friends are used to me and don’t notice anymore: I speak fast. Really, I watch movies at double speed because I understand what they’re saying because I tend to talk that fast. I also write super-quickly. When I’m nervous I speed up even more. I’ve been known to give a 15 minute presentation in under 8 minutes without leaving anything out. As La said “You’re an awesome teacher, just try… keep it below the speed of light?” So I’m stressing that they won’t be able to keep up with me because they are undergrads, and if I’m anything to go by, they’ll want to write down every word.

2. I go off on tangents. I have the attention span of a two-year old, which can make me super effective as a sequential-multi-tasker but awful to follow in a conversation. I generally have at least three or four conversations running at a time and I switch between them – once again I don’t notice and a lot of my friends don’t either, but Lara, in her pretending to take notes eventually gave me a blank stare and said “You just harped on about flower structure for five minutes, I’m assuming that’ll be in the exam?”

Anyway I’m stressing out now! I asked my mom if she’d do a run-through with me, but she’s swinging between being way too keen and not caring, so I think I’m actually going to gym to work out the stress a bit and then I’ll come back and go over my notes one more time. Wish me luck!

And if the worst comes to the worst, I have Lara on standby for drinks and sympathy on Monday night!

*This isn’t necessarily true as I have a really awesome bunch of friends, but in this case I think she deserves a special mention as most lawyers would not agree to spend a Saturday night being told about rodents by someone who can’t even stay on topic!

KIDSes

The anti-poaching guys finally left! I was so happy about it! Then, as I was enjoying my newfound slitude, I got a message .

Last year we had the same thing, which was totally disastrous as over 20 kids arrived, got completely trashed and were all over the house, in my equipment, throwing up in the bushes, screaming at me...

This time there are only 6 of them, they've been really polite so far - I know them pretty well from teaching them over the years. Unfortunately they also know me from trips where I'm not doing my own research, so they're a little bit too relaxed... I would like them to be in a state of mild terror, afraid of touching anything of mine... instead they've already set up a sound system the size of a small power plant and are moving between cooking dinner, rolling joints and smoking outside, while the musi thumps through my house...

I'm glad of th company, but I really really wish this didn't make me feel so old...

Sunrise!

So I've started going in to the zoo super-early to get some of the work out of the way before the volunteers get there. I usually leave when they arrive and go in to university, so I can sit in my lab and look busy. I'm still battling to focus, and it's so cold I can barely type, unless I've been clutching a hot cup of coffee, which means that by lunchtime I'm so jittery I can't sit still, and then by the time I go home I'm exhausted. I really wish that a) the zoo didn't matter to me so much and b) that I could rely on the volunteers.

The thing is, they're really awesome, and they work incredibly hard, but they don't have the experience to handle things if they go wrong, and they don't have the experience of knowing what's normal, so if something gets sick, it isn't always noticed until the animal is very very sick. The volunteers that have been there for a few weeks are fantastic, they work really hard and they're very gentle and careful, but this morning we were faced with 3 brand new little first-year students. They arrived half an hour late, which looks fantastic on their first day... admittedly I'm not fantastic at being on time, but they always know that I'll be there and that the job will be done and done properly before I go.

I just know that when I'm not there I'm going to be stressing about them all... particularly the frogs, which have become my particular... what's the word? not responsibility, but... lets just say everyone has their 'babies' there. One person does chameleons, another does snakes, someone else does big lizards, the volunteers do geckos, and I do frogs. I started with them because everyone else hated cleaning their tanks because it's difficult and they're feisty little buggers who escape all the time. But as time passed I got to love looking after them, and I know most of their personlaities and who to watch carefully. One of them even has a name (shock! Horror!) I never name anything...

It was fine before, but teh vet who almost lived down there has left now, so basically we're struggling to pick up the slack. I feel bad that this is the first time I've really emtnioned her, but it was hard to say goodbye. I've only known her sinceAMrch, but she had a huge effect on me, and I will miss her tons! And the animals will miss her more, she looked after them with everything she had, and loved them even though she was always working and exhausted.

So this weekend, when the main vet is away, the 'good' volunteers are refusing to come in because they've done over 14 days in a row, and I'm stuck at work until lunchtime, I don't know what's going to happen to the little guys.

We dewormed today, it was a lot of fun, although I'm not sure if I helped or got in the way more, but I had to explain to the new volunteers exactly how to hold lizards. Put lizard in hand and don't let go, didn't seem explicit enough... I don't think anyone ever taught me I was just expected to figure it out while looking after my first 100-odd lizards. And I learned, but quickly! I think it went faster because I was there, but there were also several escapes that were entirely my fault. One of the kids is ... not scared, more uncomfortable around reptiles. She works super-hard and never avoids responsibility at all, and I've been really impressed with her. anyway to teh story: a gecko escaped, went past about 3 people and made a beeline for her, where it jumped onto her, ran up her arm and onto her face! I caught it pretty quickly, but it was so funny! She was really good too and didn't flinch or do the "get this off me!" dance or anything, which was good.

Afterwards while taking sick gickos to the hospital for observations one of the new volunteers asked me if she could work with the frogs. I was a bit rude to her. I feel bad, but moer because weveryone I discuss it with yells at me. Yes, I can't be there 7 days a week. But I don't want a newcomer doing one of the most finicky jobs. And no, it's not my place to decide. But if they escape and I'm not there to catch it and she can't catch it, then it will dehydrate and die. I feel justified!

That is the end of my rant.

Oh and the title is from a Japan and I song. It's because I'm feeling a bit stretched time-wise at the moment. Entirely my fault as well. And the fact that I can't decide between working on a paper tomorrow or going to the zoo to practise snake-handling...

I wish I didn't have such awesomely fun distractions!

And I have cuts on my hands from deworming the other lizards on Monday (spiky tails, thrashing around...) which are inflamed from the latex gloves this morning. And it itches.

That is all!

Birthday coffee!

So yesterday was my birthday! And it was a really really special day! Most of my friends remembered and sent really awesome messages, which was so nice. Luke was really fantastic, doing everything from going for ice-cream, to going geocaching, and driving everywhere. Thanks Luke, you is rox!!!

Duncan and Tom and Luke and I went off to dinner to an Indian place that I really love, and dinner was fabulou as usual. We went from there to a place in Greenside, where Luke found a fly in his drink (really!). It was so nice to not have to sit home alone on my birthday, so thanks guys! It was the best birthday present ever!

Jen and Megs got me an Espresso maker, and coffee grounds as well as a whole bunch of cool little things for my trip. I made myself WAY too much coffee this morning and am almost twitching! My mom got me really cute little Espresso cups, so I got to use one! Luke gave me a first aid kit (which is far more necessary than I'd like to admit...).

On top of all of that, all the well-wishes and fun that I had, it was the K-I-D-Ses that really made my day special! One of the secons year students sent me a message the night before asking to arrange a meeting because some of them were confused about an assignment that was due yesterday afternoon. I panicked a bit becasue I didn't really remember that section very well, and dashed into my lab, reading over everything quickly before they arrived.

Then the door opened and about half the second-year class trooped in. I though "Oh boy, it must be a really big problem!") when all of a sudden they presented me with coffee, choc-chip cookies and a whole bunch of coffee and choc-chip muffins (I like coffee, in case nobody noticed). There was no problem, they just wanted to give me a surprise! It was so totally unexpected, I was stunned! Then in the lab in the afternoon Luke gave me a cupcake and I wandered around while random groups of students sang happy birthday to me and behaved really really well (for a lab).

Its day like that that make all the marking and drudgery and explaining and re-explaining worth it! So I guess I love my friends AND my students and everyone else!

Birthdays rock!

The only negative (unless you count the fly in Luke's drink) is that I got an email from teh faculty saying that they won't fund my trip overseas to do lab work. Not sure what I'm going to do... Plus I got an email saying that the equipment we just sent off for a service (a week ago) has not yet arrived in the states, which means that I won't be able to begin fieldwork on schedule. So if I have to postpone fieldwork ANd lab work to next year, it'll make my life very difficult. I'm going off now to try and make a plan!

looking back

So tomorrow is my birthday, and I feel like indulging in some reminiscing about the last year. Because I can!

It's weird, I feel like I've never actually been 22. about 8 months ago I though I was 23 for some reason, and have been preparing to turn 24. Except that I'm still 22. Almost exactly a year ago I took my first long trip that I drove on (previously the furthest I had ever driven was a 150km field trip), taking myself 950km away from home all alone. I spent my birthday at Augrabies, the most beautiful place in the world, and spent the day watching some pretty awesome lizards. I drove home the next day. On the way down my CD player stopped working, so I ended up spending 11 hours listening to OFM (the sound of central south africa), with their million repeats of Justin Timberlake songs, and weird adverts for butcheries ("Manny's meat, waar goeie vriende...MEAT!"). On the way home I listened to it again. That was the day of the highschool shootings in the US, so I had a rather unpleasant trip back, thinking about violence, and kids, and what it all means.

The day after my birthday I also got my first ever ticket, for running a stop-street in a tiny town in the northern cape. The sign was almost hidden, the lines on the road were faded and it was raining. The people in front of me didn't stop so I didn't know it was there. Unfortunately, coming the other way was a van full of policemen on their way to lunch!

22 was the year when I came to grips with being a PhD student, and learned a lot about friendship and the incredible support I got in a decision to start a doctorate at 21. I still have days when I feel like I'm just pretending, like a little kid dressing up in adult's clothes that are waaay too big, but I also know that I ahve a supoprt system for days like that, and I'm eternally grateful!

I started geocaching, which has shown me exactly how much we walk past every day without knowing that its there! I went to the Wild coast for the first time and had my first real holiday in years! My brother got married (ok, I was still 21, but it was a big event!) as did a lot of my friends. I got tickbite fever for the first time! and sunstroke for the millionth. Elvis began his travels, after I got him in an experience where I laughed so hard I couldn't stand up!

I did my own fieldwork for the first time ever, and realised a lot of what was gonig on while I was a field assistant and I didn't necessarily understand why people reacted they way that they did. I learned to spend time alone, and take long walks when I got frustrated. I leanred to love the simplicity of waking up every day witha simple task, and working non-stop to do whatever needed to be done. To be the one who has to make the decision when things go wrong, and to make a plan to stop any other mishaps. To get back to Joburg has never been harder!

There have been a lot of firsts in the last year, and a lot of times that I didn't feel like I was coping. Which meant that I learned a lot about how much I can actually deal with, when to stop and give up, and when to keep going. I learned about support systems, and how when you leave friends behind for 3 months at a time, you can pick up right where you left off, as long as you remember that they didn't stop living when you weren't there.

So much happened that I can't explain, or write about properly. I guess I'm scared, with so much happening in one year I'm not quite sure I can handle any more in the coming eyar. But if nothing new happens... I don't think I could handle it either! But I guess I will, because I always do. And that's a good thing! I think.

cooking (and cooking and cooking and cooking)

So there's a fieldtrip that goes to the east coast every year to teach the little second year students all about the marine ecosystems and the stuff you find living there. As well as basic ecology and systematics and experimental design. That's in 10 days! 8 if you don't count travelling days. It's an awesome trip and I really love it, you get to go to all these incredible places and look at things that are so interesting and so different from the usual stuff we do at university that it feels like a break in another world. In the previous 2 years I went as a taching assistant, which was awesome because I got to do all the cool stuff without the stress of the exam at the end. This year I wasn't invited. Rather, I was not invited as teaching staff, but rather as 'caterers assistant' by the caterer who has become a good friend of mine after I spet the previous 2 trips helping her in every spare moment. The cooking facilities are really bad and feeding around 50 people is a big job!

So I agreed. I figured that I would still have time to help students, plus I love the trip so much I thought it would be worth cooking (something that I hate) just to be there. I was wrong.

Firstly, I had no idea how living in the middle of nowhere for 3 months had affected me. I've actually become somewhat antisocial and having 45 people around all the time drove me crazy. I actually started taking breaks where I would go and walk on the beach for an hour or so and just take some 'alone time' to breathe!

Secondly I hate cooking. The facilities consist of microwaves (in separate cottages. I did a lot of runing from cottage to cottage) and stoves the size of microwaves with a hot plate on top. Either the hot plate OR the stove could work at one time, and if too many cottages were using theirs our food didn't cook. Often I would have pots going in adjacent cottages and just sprint back and forth to stir and so on...

Third, we had load shedding. That is where our infrastructure can't handle the electricity requirements of everyone using power, as well as power stations needing maintenance, so random areas have power cuts that last up to 2 hours, often twice or three times a day. If that happens just before dinner, you're in a lot of trouble! One day we had to make 45 individual pasta salads,and we had a power cut, so when it came back on I sat until 2am cooking pasta (the caterer was feeling sick, and I let her sleep through the whole saga). To this day I can't eat pasta without feeling ill!

Fourth. It's hard to say this without sounding egotistical. Basically, I know the work. I really really do. I loved the course and worked really hard, to a point where I very nearly left my current university to go to the coast to study Marine biology. So as much as I enjoyed the fact that I was making their lives easier and making it possible for the kids to work without worrying about anything else (and for the record, they were the nicest group of students I've ever encountered on a fieldtrip, always volunteering to help, and nice to chat to), I came to resent to people who were there to teach, and I also resented the fact that whenever I wanted to participate I had to cook. There was even a day when I came down with heatstroke on the beach and went to lie down, only to be woken up half an hour later to make lunch. Yes, it's why I was there and I was happy to do my job with a smile. But it shouldn't have been my job.

It was possibly the hardest 10 days I've had in a long time. I had to think through my priorities and my rationalising being there. Fortunately I have some really supportive friends (on and off the trip) who were always willing to listen, even when I just needed to complain to get the nasty thoughts out of my system. I realised that I was holding onto something that ended when I wasn't invited back. And as much as I love the trip, I don't love it that much. So, unless I get invited as a teaching assistant again, that was the last time for me and the fieldtrip. I'm glad I got to spend it with such fantastic kids, and sad about the politics going on amongst the staff that very nearly ruined it for me. And at least every time I cook now I can rejoince in the fact that it's only ONE tomato! or one cucumber. Not 10 or 500!

2 months down the line...

I really missed blogging! I got a lot more stuff donethough, I didn't realise how much time I spent blogging and reading other people's blogs (I missed all of them too!). But I just realised it's almost 2 months since my last post and I think you all deserve an update.

My proposal is currently in the form of a very well though out and organised 2-page long list, that I've tried to translate into fuull sentences and ended up with 40 pages of stuff that doesn't really make sense. I took it to workj today to work on and then left it there. So I'll be trekking out up north tomorrow to go and retieve it. not that it's really necessary (besides saving the trees by not printing another copy), but I was working in an old book that has some notes in it from a subject I really loved when I was in second year. So I want to hang on to them. I went off to the Northern Cape for just under a week in April. I spent y birthday with mylizards. the place is so incredible! It's beautiful! And everyone was really nice. The people camping near me were really friendly and kept trying to feed me when they saw I wasn't doing the traditional "make-a-fire and cook half a cow" south african thing but rather having a sandwich and going to bed at 7pm.

Every night it was someone different. I had the old guy from Upington with his son from New Zealand. This guy had cycled over 8000km around south africa and then bought a motorbike and done about that around Namibia. He's leaving next month for Australia where he has planned a 3-month cycling trip from Sydney to Perth (or the other way around. I forget). The next night was a very sweet family from Cape Town ('we made too much Potjie. PLEASE help us eat it!) who sat on the steps of their camper-vans playing the harmonica and then started up sokkie-treffers and sokkied the night away next to my tent. After that was a lovely family, also from Cape-Town who I got very fond of and spoke to them a lot. They'd pretty much taken their kids to the Kgalagadi transfrontier park for a month even though it involved their daughter missing a week of school because they figured she'd get a better education on a trip like that. When I told them about my lizards they got very excited and actually saw some the next day and took a really nice photo which they gave to me. There were also the strange conversations in the bathroom about what the word in afrikaans for bath-plug was because you had to bring your own and stuff. The night before I left a very motherly tannie chased me out the bathroom because I was leaving early (I left at 4am) and should go to bed. this was on my birthday so the whole way through my phone was ringing and bleeping while I was shooed to my tent by a middle-aged lady in curlers and pyjamas with fluffy pink slippers.

What was really amazing was how friendly the Afrikaans people were. they were mostly from the Cape. Gauteng people made really tight circles with their cars (almost like oxwagons ;)) and put their tents inside and didn't speak to anyone. I almost wanted to cover my number plate on my car so I wasn't linked to them in any way! It was a really amazing trip though. As muich as I didn't want to go on my own I'm glad I did. Partly it was a chance to prove to myself that I could manage a 940km drive on my own (it was actually quite fun1), and partly to have some time to be quite completely alone. I was out with my lizards from about 7am until around 4 or 5pm, and I didn't have to worry about anyone else and if they were bored or miserable or tired. And then I went to bed at about 7 (sunset) so I caught up on tons of sleep and got home ready to really get started. I got excited about my project for the first time in months anbd it was fantastic!

I resigned from my job last week after the politics got too much and I got so stressed out with university and work and people that I actually made myself sick (not in the finger-down-the throat way, in the I'm-so-stressed-I-can't-sleep-and-get-all-nervous-and-nearly-pass-out-and-can't-keep-anything-down kind of way. Kind of like the end of honours last year). It was really sad. I felt ok about it, considering the politics of having the manager's brother hate me and her listening to him were really childish and resulted in her phoning the owner literally seconds after I went to speak to him to demand an explanation for me going to see him. but I'll really miss working with Lara who can ALWAYS make me laugh! and when I saw the pile of horrible christmas music we have to listen to every december I got a little bit emotional. And I'll really miss the free movies! But I think it's for the best and I'm really looking forward to having my weekends unstructured and empty soon.

My supervisor is being a moron. I helped him out and with something for when he was away and all he could say afterwards was how much he had to fix up everything I'd done. Loser. I think it hurt so much mainly because I was quite nervous that we hadn't done a good enough job even though everyone else said we had. Maybe that's why I wanted him to supervise me, we have roughly equivalent standards when it comes to work. But it doesn't change the fact that I've lost a lot of respect for him as a person.

I'm finished with my first year's for the year. I'm glad that the course is over, but sad to see them go. I had a really nice group this year and we got along well (I even gave them chocolate for working hard! I've never even thought about doing that before!). A lot of them said they were thinking of doing Zoology next year, so I'm sure I'll cross paths with at least a few of them in the future. It was really frustrating though because I only had 2 students who were failing (out of 16. this is very unusual, usually at least half of them are struggling if not failing) and finally, about 2 or 3 weeks before the end I sat down with one of them and we talked through was should go in a drawing, what you should and shouldn't label. How to make your work look nice and neat (like tracing a drawing if it's been redrawn and erased and redrawn on top of itself in heavy pencil), and how to write answers that are relevant. He finally started coming right! It was so incredible! He was still failing, but he'd just about doubled his marks and was borderline-passing by the time we finished! I felt a little bit validated considering everything else going on.

The third years on the other had have been a disaster. they have lied to me, moaned at me, had a screaming match over their marks withme, complained to the lecturer about me, requested that I don't mark them... and so on. Fortunately they're really not very intelligent liars so it's easy to shut them up, but considering :a) my third years hate me; b) my proposal is proving to be tricky; c)I can't do a simple job well enough for my supervisor and d)I couldn't get along with a little 17-year-old well enough to stay at my job; and e)I found a grey hair last week (I'm22! I can't be going grey!) I've been feeling a little bit miserable lately.

so I took things to extremes, skipped the social-after-work/varsity friday evening and went home and had soup. It wasn't enough, so on Saturday (yesterday) I had more soup, and dyed my hair.

Now I'm feeling better.

Tomato soup and hair-dye rocks!
(not together obviously!)

Do I send out 'encourage me?' vibes?

ok, I know according to the desperation-style tone of my last blog, the question is kind of redundant, but, over the last few days people have all been trying really hard to encourage me. I'm not talking 'Go to south america! My astrologer said it's safe there!' (true story) kind of encourage, but the real "I know you. I know you can do this and I'll stand up for you!' kind of encouragement. It's awesome, but really sudden.

For example, Jo threatened to fire me last week for going away on fieldwork and taking Luke with me. As far as I know, the second she put the phone down Lara started yelling at her and defending me. WhenI saw her yesterday (Lara, not Jo), she kept on telling me that it'll work out and Joey has no right and so on. It was really nice of her!

Random customers keep asking about my studies and how they're going. I don't remember discussing them with many people but apparently they know me. It's nice, but kind of creepy. Like the world is watching me. I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

Then today the Australian gave me a talking-to about burnout and keeping a balanced life and how I'm intelligent and just need experience and I've got the right personality to be a scientist and so on. It was really nice, but I got the feeling that he wasn't talking about me. The same way that I felt I've been faking it in my studies so far, maybe I've been faking my personality for just as long. It was nice having him around though, we laughed a lot. My bat(rechristened Vlad, Dalv and Rodney, currently Edgar Rodney Smythe) was 'mysteriously' hung from the ceiling over the weekend and now dangles over my desk. Whenever I need to procrastinate I swing him around and then dodge his flights around my head. He also made me two CDs, one didn't work, so I got a blank CD, the other Bonobo, is really cool. Chilled, Cafe-del-marish but not, if you know what I mean.

Otherwise I've been pretty unproductive. I realised on the weekend exactly how tired I was, and I ended up sleeping a lot, between work and stuff. I also (at work) watched Happy Feet (disappointing), Zoom (better than expected), The Holiday (I didn't finish it, I got bored), Bee Season (a freaky movie that I didn't like much. My fascination for spelling bees continues though. I just don't get it!) and something else that was obviously mediocre because I forgot what it was. I also got along really well with Chris, which was weird. He's got addicted to the teddy bear machine and gave me 2 frogs and a fluffy toadstool thing. I planned to give one of the frogs to the australian but forgot.

Of of the honours students found sperm for the first time today. There was much rejoicing! The other one came back from very unsuccessful fieldwork, empty-handed but very happy with himself for getting an all-expenses paid holiday. I'm finding him more annoying by the minute.

I'm reading articles on personality research in animals. In one study people dressed up as ghosts (complete with buckets on their heads) and measured the dogs' response. Weird.

I'll say something more interesting when I have something to say...

Energy reserves

No, I'm not going to talk about something like oil and coal and war and why I drive around instead of taking the bus. I'm going to talk about people. How is it that some people have this boundless energy? And others just run out so quickly? What makes some people able to jump up and down when it's necessary, while others just collapse?

I'm thinking about this because I finished at wits today completely exhausted. My first years were not the most cooperative today, they were bored by the material I think (tapeworms and so on) and tired from writing tests all week. Eventually I finished and settled down at Biosoc with a bunch of people to try and relax enough to be able to go home without nervous twitches (but not relaxed enough to fall asleep on the lawn and wake up covered in hazard tape).

Then my brother called. It turned out that Tree 63 - a South African band that has settled in the U.S.A but has been here touring - was playing a last concert about 2 minutes drive away from my house. Carla was so busy being stressed out about wedding plans to go, so her ticket was free. I refused because I knew she'd love to see them and should probably take a break. He called make a few minutes later to say that she was going, but there were still tickets from friends who couldn't go, and I must get home ASAP to make it in time.

So I went sprinting down the hill, where I ran into Ben, a masters student studying owls. Turn out he's going on a Happening weekend - a kind of camp type thing, hard to explain - and I ended up chatting to him for ages before I realised the time and dashed home.

The concert was really good except that 3 little teenage girls (all: 'watch me dance! I'm so pretty! let me swish my hair into other people's faces so they can see how shiny and soft it is!') kept dancing into my way so I'd shuffle to the right a bit until I ended up separated from my brother and Carla and behind a rather stocky afrikaans guy who kept yelling stuff like 'Vrystaat!' and 'Boerewors!' and who had obviously eaten something too rich or something before he came, because the smells emanating from him every five minutes or so were enough to knock out a full grown lion from a 25m radius.

A cool thing was also that I ran into someone I had in my group when I was a staff-member on Happening. I had been very fond of him, but lost his number somewhere along the line. It was so nice to see that he's doing well and still laughs a lot and jumps around. He's a long story of mine that I won't be telling here. But I will say that the fact that he is laughing like that means a lot to me. He's going to be delivering stuff to people for me tomorrow.

Anyway, seeing him, and chatting to Ben and being too tired to walk after TAing and jumping around made me think about energy. How is it that sometimes you have this hidden reserve and sometimes you don't? Like today, I wanted to collapse, but I was able to have a great time at the concert. Another time I was on a camp as staff and we were so exhausted one day we all fell over and lay on the floor together. The minute the kids arrived we were all on our feet dancing and jumping around and doing silly things. Where does the energy come from? And why can't I harness it more often?

It's all run out now. I'm going to bed.

For once I just can't think of a title...

I've really fallen out of the habit of writing here. Maybe that's because I'm actually moderately productive at the moment. Vanessa sent me an article yesterday about how boring scientific articles are, and how we're trained to write in a really boring style. I managed to read the whole thing without losing concentration, which is the first time that's happened in ages. So maybe I'm struggling so much because of the boring style of scientific writing. The scary thing was that in the list of things to do to keep your writing boring, I identified with a lot of them! So my writing is boring too :(

On a positive note, the honours students finished their presentations yesterday. The first one was ok, not great though. The problem is that he's doing the whole 'my supervisor must contact me' thing, so a lot of his points were completely confused. Especially the experimental design, the stats and so on. Often he's start a sentence with something like "I'm not quite sure how I'll do this yet." As I said, he's still a K-I-D-S in a lot of ways. He's heading off on fieldwork in a few days, but doesn't know how he's going to store the animals there for 2 weeks, what to feed them and so on. He really needs to talk to my supervisor, but I don't know if he will. the thing is that my supervisor tends to forget about pretty much everything that's not in his immediate vicinity. It's annoying but you have to work around that and actually remind him of stuff. I'm not getting involved, so this should be interesting.

The other student's presentation was a lot better, she'd actually sent it to both her supervisors and me for feedback. So the supervisors corrected the science side of things and I commented on stuff like fonts and slide layout. she also did an extra practise session with me, so it came out sounding pretty good. There were a few issues, like the fact that she has absolutely no history with behavioural ecology and that sort of thing, so she's confused about the main issues that she's investigating. She's learning quickly and I'm sure she'll sort it out. At least she's not too proud to ask for help!

Otherwise I went to Claire's kitchen tea on Saturday. It was in Boksburg at the House of Ribs. TI was fun, very small. It's looking like this wedding is going to be a lot smaller than the huge ones I've been going to, which is nice. I'm glad I got a chance to meet some of the people who will be there.

Chris has been running the shop for Jo while she's away for 2 weeks. HE's gone a complete power-trip, taken practically all the shifts, kicked me off a shift (I wanted to go at 5 or so on Saturday when it got busy, he refused, and then told Jo I hadn't offered anything). she got really angry when I organised for Matt to work for me this Saturday so I can help with stuff for my brother's wedding. It turned out Christ had asked Matt already and then not told me. Then he called Jo and said I was refusing to work. She sent me an angry message and I called her immediately and she screamed at me. So I'm working on saturday and Carla is angry with me for not helping. I can't win sometimes :(

I watched some interesting movies recently. On Sunday I watched half of 'Little Miss Sunshine' before it went out. It was awesome! I can't wait to see the rest of it! I was laughing so hard at some points! I will make more substantial comments when I've seen the rest of it. After that I started watching 'Spellbound' which is a documentary folloiwing a few of the kids going to the national spelling bee in america. They show it on ESPN! It just really shocked me to see how long some people spend learning to spell words that they will probably never use. And the kids work so hard! Why does anyone care? It's spelling. And there's no international contest because nobody actually cares. I just feel really sad for kids who spend such huge chunks of their life doing that, What for? Will it actually get them anywhere. I guess they learn to perform under pressure and apply themselves to studying for something and so on, but really.

Then yesterday I took my huge piles (2 piles) of marking home to mark in front of the tv. I had a movie called Enigma, with Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet. I enjoyed it so much I kind of forgot about my marking pretty early on and just sat there watching it, so I ended up sitting marking until quite late last night. I left one set of memos at wits, so I only got through one pile, but at least it's done now. I don't know why I liked it so much, it's very different to the sort of thing I usually watch. I don't know, but I liked it.

Anyway I must go and read more boring papers. then mark a HUGE stack of drawings.

It's over!

And now we reach the end of yet another week at Wits. It's been entertaining, while mildly productive. I've got to the 'start-writing' phase of section 1 of my proposal, but am putting it off in favour of reading for chapter 2.

I also spent countless hours TAing, marking and doing general admin around wits, while sitting her until late at night working on my actual research. It's weird, we are ehre primarily as research students, but have to squeeze in the research among all the rest of life at wits.

I saw a lot of people's photos - Sarah's from Dubai and a new student from downstairs showed us so many amazing REAL desert photos that I really want to travel again. I'm thinking that Sunday at work would be a good time to sit down with some maps and start planning. Just because a trip is 4 years away doesn't mean that I can't start getting excited!

I'm still babysitting the honours student. Rather 1 of them. The other one is really calm, as was expected. So far there was one very anxious day but otherwise he's as relaxed as is possible! The other one is a bit calmer because the Australian, her cosupervisor (and thus someone who actually UNDERSTOOD what was expected of her), came back for a day and helped her a lot. She emailed me a copy of the big presentation but forgot to attach it. Oops.

Anyway, world war 3 is still going at home. I gave up on fighting, it's too much effort, so I'm just avoiding most people. It's less draining.

Otherwise I had a lot of funny things happen, watch this space and I mightr write about them. I laughed a lot this week, which counts for something!

The dog is fine

As Luke, who should be my PA, explained, the dog is a lot better. He had cellulitis as a secondary thing to an allergic reaction to something, probably grass. He's on all kinds of medication, some of which got lost and was found in the fridge. My dad tried to pretend he'd done that on purpose.

And for the record, KIDSes (pronounced K-I-D-Ses) are undergraduate students. It comes from a fieldtrip (that I did not attend) where the lady in charge of catering got upset by someone's offensive language and yelled out "Don't say @%^$# in front of the KIDSes!"

It's been a very hectic few days, Saturday was Carla's kitchen tea, which was a lot of fun, but also quite crazy to set up as she was sick and hardly left the house all week (update: she's a lot better). So I ended up sitting in the kitchen, trying to tie bows on champagne glasses at something like 10:30 at night, rushing home, colapsing and then leaving super-early the next morning to cut bits of wire and arrange beads into boxes and so on.

The whole event was quite fun, very relaxed and quite tame compared to others that I've been to, but I'm pretty sure that was a good thing! So I got home afterwards and passed out on my bed to be woken 2 hours later by a phone call about another kitchen tea coming up. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! But I had to get up anyway to go to a 21st birthday party, where I ended up spending about 3 hours on a trampoline. I hurt the next day!

I was going to post whenI got home, but then I saw in the History on the home PC that someone in my immediate family is reading this, and it upset me. I don't know who it is, but I'd really appreciate it if they actually told me...

And then yesterday was running around like a maniac, giggling through pre-labs and the TAing a neverending flower-prac. Speaking of which, I have marking to do...

because I'm tired of reading

I worked today! Not that much, but enough to be able to go to bed knowing that my waking up actually had some purpose besides getting a sore head and neck (bad dream, fell out of bed). I'm nowhere near where I planned to be today, but it's all progress and I'm starting to get excited about my project again.

On the downside my dog is sick. He was looking a bit ...not right... yesterday and he was licking his paw. Tonight he has almost no fur on his mouth and his paw looks HORRIBLE! it's almost hairless too... so I put some disinfectant on it all and a sock over his foot to stop him licking it (he looks adorable!) and I'm going to see how he is tomorrow. I can't get him to the vet until at least tomorrow afternoon, unless it's really bad, in which case Luke and Kelly will be TAing all aloooone! *evil laugh*!

One of the students from the field-trip made a little movie-thing of photos and videoclips from the trip and screened it today. It's really cool, I wish we'd done that for our third-year fieldtrip. I remember getting really depressed coming home from that because I missed it so much. That's the crappy side of being a post-grad. you get to go on trips, but it's hard to actually go the way we did when we were KIDSes. Anyway the movie we saw today was awesome, but I must admit, the clip of me falling over in the mudflats was a lot cooler in my head (less - for lack of a better word - ungraceful). Still funny though!

I also chatted to one of the new honours students in my lab today. She's actually really nice, I think we'll get along ok. She's also started her own CC - a homeschool tutoring company, and said I can work there occasionally. I'm not sure if I'm going for it, but at least the opportunity is there. I saw the other honours student too, but he and I don't see eye-to-eye much. he's still very much an undergrad at heart (aren't we all) and hasn't learned to distance himself from the KIDSes too well. I'm not saying that being friends with them is bad, it's just that he doesn't spend any time with the people in his own class (who are nice kids, really). So a) he'll have little/no authority when it comes to teaching his 'friends' and b) when the pressure starts, which it will, no matter how chilled he is, he'll be all alone with friends who have no clue about what he's going through. I would never have made it through last year without all the help and support I got from the honours room. I doubt he's even got a desk there yet. And every time I try to show that I'm around if he needs anything he freaks out because he thinks I'm stressing. I'm not. I just know what happens if you leave stuff too long. He's a really nice guy, I'm just not sure we'll be hanging out too much in the next year!

Anyway I'm going to go to bed to fall asleep over another paper. I missed working hard!