Saturday, February 11, 2006

Updates: Committee-wise, Superstition-wise and Otherwise

I now have my two university examiners lined up. That means my whole thesis defence examination committee is pretty much set! (Although I do have to decide on just three of my five supervisory committee members -- two have been picked, one has been eliminated, so I just need to pick the last one of two possibilities). My supervisory committee is scheduled to give me comments back on my thesis by next Friday, meaning I have one week left in which I don't need to think about my thesis. Yay!

In other news, I received a pretty cool request this week. Well, not me in particular, but the science outreach program that I run. A delegation is coming to Vancouver from China and would like to meet with us to hear about how we promote science to kids as they are interested in doing this too and thought that they could learn from us. Just some government officials and senior managers from the regional and provincial level. Cool, eh?

I finally decided to take the plunge and get all of the postdoc related emails out of my inbox and into the postdoc folder where they belong. As I now have an official offer letter from them, which I've officially accepted, I figure that it's OK to now get those emails out of the way. (Sarah, I considered your suggestion that I label the folder "postdoc inquiries," but in the end I felt that the dieties would see through such a ploy). Unforutnately, in the intervening time my superstition has expanded and I'm now afraid to take any Ph.D. defence emails out of my inbox, for fear that it will jinx me on my defence!

Other than that, not much new. Trying to get some stuff done that I've been putting on the back burner while I was working on my thesis. Bo-ring! Have a giant pile of papers to mark that I really don't want to start. Next week is UBC's Reading Week, so I suppose I can use the time that I normally would be teaching to do the marking. But I'm not happy about it.

5 comments:

Beth said...

Thanks Katie! I've had a few responses from that email and everyone has picked a different word (or three).

A little background: I got this email from a friend asking to send one word that you felt described that person best. If anyone else would care to suggest the one word they think describes me, feel free!

Anonymous said...

I hope everything goes well with the thesis. I have a couple of friends that are in the process of writing theirs right now, and they are not having fun.

I'm glad it's almost over for you!

Dave said...

When you say that one of your supervisory committee members has been eliminated, what exactly are we talking? Garroted with piano wire? Belly shot? Car bomb?

Beth said...

I'd tell you, Dave, but then I'd have to kill you.

Anonymous said...

Why are all the cute girls the deadly ones?