It dawned on me today that I had missed a few days of blogging. I wish I had a good excuse, but I don’t. I do have, however, 2 bad excuses. One is that the semester is drawing to a close and things are getting hectic with papers, meetings, honors theses, etc. My second excuse is that I am just blown out. Blowout is a PKAP term for a mental state senior staff sometimes get into due to a combination of overwork, lots of sun, and high heat. For me, it is characterized by me lying around and reading or sleeping, instead of doing work. I did not think I could get blown out in the US and that the condition was limited to archaeological projects in the Mediterranean, but I noticed my symptoms yesterday, plus I was using more PKAP jargon than ever – I assume that this is a side effect of blow out in the US.
One news item I noticed today was “Boston College Will Stop Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts.” It seems that officials at BC felt that many students came to school with established email addresses that they preferred to use and did not use their BC email address. So they will offer email forwarding instead. I found this to be interesting since IUP has gone in the opposite direction and stopped forwarding student email in an effort to force students to use their IUP email address. This is an important issue since ensuring communication between faculty and students, and the university and students is very important. It is amazing how many students come in and say they never heard about something important we were trying to publicize (a deadline, a grant, etc.). It will be interesting to see which solution works best.
RSM
Ancient History Ramblings 