i have an office!

see, very exciting! as you can see, i share with two others, and we are mainly expected to just be there two hours a week - office hours for our students to come see us.



this is what it looks like inside, and if you open that long window on the right and sidle through. . .



you get out on the balcony! which is where people hang out a bit. (with a view of the panopticon, if you will). so all good. i do have a phone in there, with an extension number. perhaps people could call if we coordinated times quite carefully. not sure. also i might be able to call out on a phone card. anyway, that makes me feel like i belong a bit more. the one other occupant i've met is very affable. it's a bit odd: having a bank card also makes me feel like i belong. not that i have any money on it yet, but i will get paid in a couple of weeks, i think. still filling in forms.

another exciting thing today was this:



i've never bought the NY times before! if the photo is a bit odd, it is because i put the camera on timer and balanced it on my shoe. the photo on the balcony was taken by a random girl up there admiring the view.

things are improving. i haven't cried all day. i have been off being irredeemably friendly and nice and enthusiastic and chirpy. very wearing. . . no, i'm meeting lots of nice people. classes have started. so far i've had one seminar about asian-canadian literatures, which is taken by a fairly famous prof, and it's his last grad seminar. so that's all a bit special. also he is incredibly knowledgeable. a lot of the material went over my head, but i just let it wash and picked up what i could. i can see i'll learn a lot. i've also been to three first year lectures (two for the first year class i'm TAing for and one by a proto-friend on young adult lit) and led two tutes. the subject i'm teaching is on contemporary prize winning novels, and has 289 students! the prof, who is young and angular, does the lecture miked (with a headset and one of those battery packs on her waist) and there are eight TAs (Teaching Assistants - we run tutorials and mark papers). we all went out for coffee (nasty coffee) after the lecture today and swapped tute ideas. i'm trying to be a good girl and do min preparation for tutes, but it is interesting. i quite like teaching. my second tute was louder than my first, and didn't go quite as well, but on the whole i'm very happy with how it's going. i missed out on my other grad seminar because of the public holiday, which was disappointing, because the prof is apparently amazing. i met her once and she looks a bit like the crazy aunties and maternal figure.

went to an international students thing, which was a bit disappointing, but also went to the out on campus' icecream social today, which was nice. and we went out drinking after the asian-canadian seminar. canadian beer is not as icky as australian.

see.

irredeemably social.