Idleness is good for your brain

I woke up last night with the first half of a forthcoming article formed in my brain. I had to get up and write the major points down, otherwise it would have been gone in the morning. The funny thing is, I have not actively thought about it much since last November, except for printing out an old, very confused draft a week ago and giving it a cursory glance. For the last week I have been doing absolutely nothing academic. In fact I was even hospitalized for two days due to neutropenia (abnormally low number of white blood cells which fight infections in the body).

I realized to something of my surprise that I have now, on top of the almost-finished dissertation, altogether three articles in various stages. The first one only needs some polishing, and now I have a draft and a good idea of the structure of the second. The third one is the paper for the conference in Paris, later to be edited to an article. I hope it will turn up as easily as this one!

Speaking of the conference, my recent experience with neutropenia confirmed that as long as my current treatments continue, I will not travel abroad. No travel insurance would cover the costs if I knowingly took the risk and the same happened somewhere else.

Hindsight into the future

I just finished making a summary of the student feedback from the general archaeology course last autumn. Finally that course is wrapped up. I bet the average student never realizes how much behind-the-scenes work is involved in teaching. The feedback was nice to read, though, we - meaning the other lecturer and myself - got good marks from the students.

I got this link from a friend. Hope you will find these as amusing as I did.