We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave

Photo by Emily PaddonWith only twelve days left in the term, things are getting fevered. In addition to housing, scholarship, and job search stuff, it is now reasonably likely that I might be called upon to present in core seminar. As such, I need to explicitly prepare presentations, as well as doing the readings. While that will be good when the time comes to revise for our qualifying exam, it’s not the most welcome extra project at the moment.

I finished one scholarship application today. Now, I just need to finish a paper on the question of “How convincing is the argument that ‘anarchy is what states make of it?'” by Friday, and another on the question of “Is justice compatible with international order?” by Tuesday. I have a supervision tomorrow and another scholarship application to finish in the next two days.

Spending a few hours talking with Emily in her new room tonight was very welcome. While much of the conversation related to school, it felt seperated from all matters academic to a sufficient degree to be genuinely relaxing. I should make a point of spending more social time with her and other friends and members of the program – even at the busiest and most stressful period of the term. That time is definitely now, when we’ve been going for six weeks already but there is still enough term left for deadlines to build on each other like ripples growing into a crashing wave. It was really nice to surf that wave with Emily for a while.


  • The Scanner Darkly trailer looks awesome, mostly because of the unique style of animation. (Quicktime link) This may become the first film I see in a theatre in the UK, though I didn’t think overly much of the book.
  • The talk on “The impact and role of major international scientific assessments on global governance” that I announced here and hoped to attend tomorrow has been cancelled due to “family bereavement.”

9 thoughts on “We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave”

  1. Yeah, nice to see a decent photo… I have some dead time around the department about 4-5 next Tuesday. Is that any good for you?

  2. Ben,

    Tuesdays are my busiest day. I am sure we will run into one another at the department at some point, especially if I start reading there more.

    Robert,

    I haven’t seen any such films before and I thought this trailer represented a new style of animation. It’s less exciting if it does not.

  3. That’s a really good photo, actually. Perhaps the best portrait you’ve had up here. That’s despite it clearly having been shot at 400 ISO equivalent.

  4. Yes, except when I will be in Malta.

    I am also at the Strategic Studies Group meetings at All Souls every Tuesday at eight.

  5. No problem, some other time – though I don’t really use the dept/SSL all that much at present, I’ll keep an eye out for you when I happen to be there.

    Will you be around over Easter?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *