The Cambridge Chat Thread

I wish I was going out tonight I'm in dreary essay land.

And so you should have alex; remember the lecture about types of fun

Once again, I completely agree about the different types of fun. However, in contemporary Britain the term "going out" (particularly at this time of night) is very commonly used to imply "going out clubbing".

Just curious - how many essays do you get a term in Archaeology, and what sort of other work do you have? Do digs get written up like lab reports or something?

It varies heavily, but this term it looks as if I will have between ten-twelve essays, one presentation, one research design, and one field report. In addition, I have my dissertation to research (thus why I'm at the British Museum on Wednesdays). There are, in addition, two assessed essays which are due at around the same time as the dissertation.

I wouldn't know what constitutes a lab report, as such. For excavation there is a formal system of recording and reporting which is used to convey data into a published format, which are largely 'grey literature' and heavily jargon-based*. This style of report is normally produced by trench supervisors/excavation directions, derived from context sheets which are produced by the excavators in the trenches (i.e., me). I produce one field report this year, which is pretty much like the quotation below. Otherwise, essays tend to be synthetic, and, as such, do not need to enter into the same degree of descriptive prose that a report would feature. Sure, you might occasionally have to perform close-studies of stratigraphic reports, like that below, but it depends on your specialisms: I'm a ceramicist, so I have my own world of jargon that would probably be incomprehensible to a lithics specialist (it's all "vegetable- and chaff- tempered micaceous wares developed by SSC", and so on).

Oh, and of course, we too have densely ontological theoretical essays.

* to the tune of: "Locus 1875 consisted of five superpositioned-stratigraphic layers, beginning with Context t. 5 which is a 10 cm lens of ashy spoil containing larger grains of unidentified carbonized material. This layer occurred evenly throughout Locus 1875, and lay on a sterile basal level of sand-washed gravel and compacted, yellowish fill ..." etc, etc, etc.

Come on the TSR Cindies Meet next week.

Thanks for the offer, & sorry to be all anti-social, but I really don't *do* Cindies It's Revs on Tues or Kambar for me...

At least the essay's done now

Doh! Lucky they're out of stock in my size or I might have struggled the call of the debit card...
I'll have a look sometime. It has wool, which certainly helps. But yeh. I really need to hold out till the sales - that seems such alot of money for clothes!

How is it that I can possibly have gotten to 23.26 without doing a shred of work? I've been busy but I don't know with what! And now I have a translation into Spanish and a translation from Russian three books to doread before I can sleep

I actually remembered what I did though Sorted through and put away all my Tesco shop, did my washing up, cleaned all the skanky milk out of the bottom of my fridge, went and bought lunchboxes in debenhams and a baking tray in Poundland, put on three loads of washing, cooked dinner, ate dinner watching University Challenge, wrote a list of all my Shadowing Scheme volunteers and made my Mich term Desert Island Discs to send to my family. So I was hellishly productive, just in all the wrong ways...

Am I right in saying that I just got an email from you explaining the subscription to the medical social list?

I feel the same, but I decided to learn Red Army marching songs on the balalaika instead.

This was ... a constructive use of time?

What's up?