Students these days...

.... are BRILLIANT. My undergrads just get smarter and smarter every year (or, as the British say, "cleverer and cleverer"... "smart" means looking dressed-up and professional!). This year I have 5 2nd-years whom I met with 4 times this term, and I received ZERO late essays. Zero. AND all their essays had footnotes AND they were ALL spell-checked AND some of them were even incredibly good. I don't know if this is a general trend of undergrads being more motivated and clever because university is more and more competitive and expensive in this country, or maybe because my students this year are from a posh college whereas in past years I've had students from not-so-posh colleges and the posh colleges get first dibs on the brilliant kids... Unclear, but it's been GREAT for me. Here's what one of my 2nd-years emailed me, along with an essay that was double the required word limit:
"Here's the final essay - I can only apologise for the length..."  :) Sheesh, most people apologize for not turning in an essay, or for it being late, or for it being bad! Too long essay most likely = motivated and interested student and thus probably a GOOD essay!


In other news, yesterday there was a major strike of millions of public sector workers across the UK, from teachers and professors to nurses and paramedics to "bin men" (garbage collectors). No one knows if this strike will change the huge planned cuts, particularly to public sector workers' pensions and a higher retirement age of 68. There were marches through Cambridge, picket lines in front of university buildings, and rallies throughout the day. Almost all the lecturers were on strike in HPS, so all the lectures were canceled and the department was empty (except for the un-unionized grad students).

I marched and rallied and wore a sticker saying "I support my lecturers". Making pay cuts and job cuts are one thing, but cutting pensions is scary. People rely on those as their life savings. And who would work in the public sector if it didn't offer good, reliable, safe pensions, since the pay is already crappy? At the same time, I don't believe in protesting against the government of a country that is hosting me, so I was more of a supporter than a participant. I didn't carry a sign or scream "CUT BACK? STRIKE BACK" or "STUDENTS AND WORKERS, UNITE". I just walked along in the crowd with my sign-carrying English friends and my German boyfriend (who also didn't shout, because his country has *extra* money and definitely no cuts) and admired the schoolkids who came to wave at their marching teachers and smiled at the police, who most likely would have been striking along with all the other public employees except that it's illegal for police to strike. 


A striking postdoc in our department set this as her email bounce-back message:
"I'm taking industrial action in support of UCU's [University and College Union] campaign for a fairer pension.  Consequently I may not respond to your email as quickly as usual; I appreciate your patience and/or solidarity."
I thought "industrial action" was a strange phrase, like a university lecturer trying to identify with factory workers. But according to Wikipedia, this is a Britishism:
"Industrial action (UK, Ireland and Australia) or job action (US) refers collectively to any measure taken by trade unions or other organised labour meant to reduce productivity in a workplace. Quite often it is used and interpreted as a euphemism for strike, but the scope is much wider."

So yesterday this action included picket lines, marching, and striking. Powerful stuff. And how funny to thank people who email you for their "patience and/or solidarity". 

For more info on why the strike happened, here's an email sent by the Cambridge University Graduate Union: 
"Dear All,
An exceptional mid-week email from me to draw your attention to strike action happening tomorrow throughout the country and in Cambridge in protest at the government's pension reforms.
This directly affects those intending to enter into a career in academia, as well as current PGCE students going on to teach in the UK.
What's happening tomorrow:
Public sector employees, including many of our lecturers, will be protesting against the UK government's pensions reform. 24 unions are currently supporting the strike - involving around 3 million members - making it one of the largest national strikes in decades.


What these changes mean:
- increased pension contributions for you, but reduced contributions from your employer, at a time of rising living costs
- lower returns at retirement
- the value of pensions being cut by 15% by the switch from RPI to CPI, while the government is promoting a move to an inferior 'career average' rather than final salary pension scheme.


The National Audit Office report in December 2010 found that public sector pensions are, contrary to what the government are saying, sustainable and affordable. Teaching unions already agreed a series of reforms to make TPS sustainable in 2006.
For more information from the Union coordinating the strike with lecturers, see here: tinyurl.com/c7pds7k


How to help:
If you disagree with these reforms, show your support!
There will be picket lines tomorrow, Wednesday 30th, between 6am and 11am at all the main entrances to the Sidgwick site and many other sites across the University.
Hot drinks and food, as well as placards, banners and leaflets will be available all morning from Lady Mitchell Hall on the Sidgwick site (next to the car park and by the Faculty of Classics), please drop in.
Join other students at the rally on Parker's Piece at 12 noon, where we will be joined by thousands of striking public sector workers from across Cambridgeshire.
Though we can't take part in the strike, we can speak out against these changes that will be affecting us in the not-too-distant future. I hope that you will take a moment to consider supporting your lecturers."

A search of a different kind...

A professor in HPS is a keen mycologist (someone who studies fungi) and every year leads a big fungus hunt for the department's seminar series, the Cabinet of Natural History. At this year's hunt, the weather had been really dry so we found very few fungi (though we had a lovely walk through the woods). Nick J was disappointed, so last week, after a few rainstorms, he organized a mini fungus hunt for only as many people as would fit in his car. As last year's organizer of the Cabinet, I was one of the lucky few!
So two grad students, a postdoc, and Nick J snuck out of town on Friday morning, with a car "boot" full of "trugs", these wooden baskets that are traditionally used for collecting fungi. (I asked Nick why he used them, and he said they were "purely decorative". :) ) The woods were super foggy and muddy and just beautiful. We ran around and collected mushrooms, Nick running around more than any of us, and then he identified our finds and made a big fuss over every one, like "This is very uncommon!"or "Wow, a Death Cap! Deadly poisonous." :)  The rest of us said things like, "Wow, look at that color" and "Huh, this one is slimy, let's throw it back..."

Cloudcaps! Very tasty, according to Nick.

We collected an entire trug full of edible mushrooms, including some boletes (that was my favorite kind of mushroom when I collected fungi for a mycologist as an undergrad - they're like little squishy sponges!). Boletes "bruise" when you squish them, and the bruise color is important for identifying the species. Nick J bruised these boletes with my name and the other student's (Ramona). Very scientific. :)

The trug of edible mushrooms, some labeled...

My other favorite find was a little squat russula mushroom, very cute and toadstool-like, with a white stem and purple cap. Nick said its Latin species name meant "the russula that's like a girl"! A girly russula - awesome. And what was I wearing that day? A purple sweater and white down vest. My mushroom matched me!

Another super important way to identify species is sniffing!

Nick would say things like, "this one smells of aniseed", or pineapple, or sulphur. We said things like, "this smells like mushroom..."

We also found a fairy ring - when mushrooms grow in a circle! Very symbolic in English mythology, apparently. See the white mushrooms growing in a big circle?

A huge fly agaric - the red and white spotted mushroom from Mario Bros video games! And it's SUPER poisonous. Cool.

Well, that was a great way to spend a Friday. :)

The Search for A Point

I think I found A Point to my PhD. Maybe not The Point, but having just A Point is the goal of everyone's PhD, and generally people don't find it until the last few months before their deadline. Then they have to go back and rewrite things to make The Point. But that's fine, because they're so thrilled that they found The Point (or even A Point!).

My Point came through a very clichéd moment of discovery - jogging around Parker's Piece in the early morning fog. I was thinking about a talk I'll give in January to the Cabinet of Natural History, the seminar that I love and that I was in charge of last year. My talk is on my Chapter 4, which is about the fact that preparators emphasize how "creative" and artistic their work is. I'm only in the middle of Chapter 3, but I've been looking forward to writing Chapter 4 for seriously like a year. Making fossils as artistic! Like sculptors making sculptures! That's such a cool idea! And so unexpected.

Anyway, I was thinking about why preparators would want to present their work and themselves as creative, and my sweaty brain decided that it was all about status. Preparators don't have formal training or credentials, so they have to claim their expertise somehow... why not by presenting themselves as creative and their work as dependent on their artistic skills? That makes them sound irreplaceable, even though they don't have credentials to make them look legit.

If a quest for legitimacy makes preparators self-identify as creative, then maybe it also drives other parts of their behavior... like how they choose their techniques (Chapter 1) and how they train new staff preparators and volunteer preparators (Chapter 2) and how they interact with other groups of people who work with fossils (Chapter 3). Defining themselves as responsible for making good choices among a huge variety of possible techniques, training new preparators to be self-sufficient but also to ask lots of questions so that the existing staff's way of doing things continues, distinguishing preparation from the arguably similar work done by researchers and collections managers and conservators, and presenting the quality of prepared fossils as reliant on their creativity which is shaped by their preparation experience... makes them look like experts and professionals. 

Who needs a degree in paleontology if you construct a world in which experienced preparators have crucial knowledge and skills that no one else has? Such that preparators don't have to fear being replaced by volunteer preparators or people off the street who have never prepared before but might have a degree in paleo?

Bam.
(For now... in a few months I might think this is a ridiculous idea and my PhD will again be Pointless.)