The RAE was looming and he felt depressed.
Never was so much expected of just one person, he thought gloomily.
A knock at the door made him start.
"Come in"
he said. "Ah Karen. You want to go off to San Paradiso for one year on the Hilary CLinton Travel grant. Does it pay overheads at 46%?".
"Yes" said Karen nervously. She always got nervous with men.
Stan brooded.
Obviously Karen would be a loss, but he needed an IT person, and this A Schoper was it seemed an IT person.
An email from one K. Grand talking of his initiatives QUEER and SILY and possible links with the University of Ruffield and the consequently large sums involved had alerted Stan to the need to do more joined-up on-line work locally around digital technology.
(Added to that, his apparently IT savvy colleagues seemed to spend their time blogging and even, he suspected, writing imaginary novels on-line not while not attending to university needs.)
"Where's the form?" he grunted.
Karen showed him Artemis's C.V., accompanied by a ravishing picture of her set against the San Paradiso skyline.
Stan's eyes widened.
"Did you say overheads?" he said. "You're on honey".
TO BE CONTINUED
6 comments:
GrreEAT! btw - What's an RAE?
Research Assessment exercise - the most important thing in academic in the UK EVER
Packing comes next.
Research Assessment exercise - the most important thing in academic in the UK EVER
Packing comes next.
Hi Kate
Do you mean packing or is it parking? Parking is my number one University concern. The RAE comes much lower; but then I have very little invested in being included.
Story developing splendidly-it's a compelling read and I turn to it before anything else when I open upmy computer. Still beats me how you manage it. Love the acronyms!
I think you should leave "honey" as the phatic endearment for the staff at San Paradiso. Stan, if down to earth might venture, "love", if sexist, and most male profs have some residual sexism lurking somewhere in their bigger, but far less useful, brains, "girl". But I think he would actually have left it as "you're on".
Packing. Parking. RAE.
What a lot to think about my dears.
I had to put 'honey' so that readers were ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that there was NO RESEMBLANCE to any real person (living or dead) and so I added an inauthentic bit of talk so people knew it was fiction but thanks for spotting that one digigran.
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