Multiculturalism.

The Indian restaurant I sometimes go to for lunch put up some new wall decorations; it used to be bare but brightly colored paint, and today I saw it's now adorned with a few big black and white posters of . . . Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, and Frank Sinatra . . ? But the soothing sitar music in the background and the gracious Indian hostess are the same.

Most unwonderful time of the year

The stretch of time between spring break and May final grade submission is the worst period of the entire year, in my opinion. Not only are you trying to finish up all the normal end-of-the-semester things, but you're also trying to finish up all the end-of-the-academic-year things, and seniors are trying to graduate, and graduate students are trying to defend & submit, AND you're trying to gear up for the summer's round of research projects and conferences.

And on top of that, we also have my Least Favorite Emails Ever. These are the emails wherein the students complain about me not rounding their grade from a C to a B-. I politely point out that they had all semester long, full of numerous opportunities, to earn a better grade, and that as stated on my syllabus, which we all agreed upon at the beginning of the semester, "I round strictly to the tenths place."

This semester, the first student to whine at me about this will risk my stony silence and bitchy demeanor. Seriously, I gave opportunities to resubmit assignments. To petition for exam score revisions if their reasoning was sound. To complete some extra credit. If a student did not take advantage of any of these opportunities, it galls me when they ask me to bump their grade out of the goodness of my heart.

We all know academia is very lucrative.

This year's raises? Word on the streets is they'll be 0.4%. Rock on.