September 08, 2006
Those email requests
I've got this little red circle on my screen that shows the number of unread emails I've got, and during the first two weeks of the semester, so many emails get sent to faculty that red circle spins like a roulette wheel. Mostly, the emails say something vaguely positive about the summer and then ask, in what is always a deliberately cheerful way, for our time. We can volunteer to judge contests, run workshops, work with elementary school kids, or help out at an educational booth at the state fair. Of course, it is not always just our time we are asked to give: a chemistry professor sent out an email saying that he is looking for people who can donate fingernail clippings. Yes, fingernail clippings, to be analyzed in a graduate course in stable isotypes. I don't know what all goes in our chemistry department, but I will say that they write the most concise and endearingly bizarre emails, always straight to the point, with little embellishment or even explanation.
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8 comments:
My dear woman this is Science! There is no room for frummery here! Unless it is properly catalogued of course.
I used to work for a local company that makes blood analyzers. Calls would often go out for blood (drawn by experienced phlebotomists, of course). Although that struck me as odd when I started there, I soon got used to it. (I come from a strictly software background.) But I never got used to going into the bathroom and seeing a tray of little plastic cups (some empty, some half full) and a note asking for urine.
Frummery! That's what I do. I KNEW there was a word for it somewhere in the world. Thanks!
And Jo(e), could you drop off some stray teenage boy decibels at my office when you get the chance?
FA
Please, please, please tell me you are donating your fingernail clippings! That is hilarious.
In college, I roomed with 5 other women, one of whom loathed feet. LOATHED them. So, one of my roommates decided to fill an old pickle jar with our collected toenail clippings, which we presented to her at the end of the year. Truly hilarious.
Have fun on your camping trip!
This made me laugh. I can just see the e-mail, getting right to the point: We need fingernail clippings. Please send to the Chem. Dept. Thanks.
fingernails! oh, my. i've gotten some weird requests for art and drama projects, but nothing quite so -- personal.
the points of security in the e-mails is something so important to know, I have been trying to get security to all my accounts!
It is interesting to know what they will do to all the fingernail clippings that they get. Obviously they needed a lot because their own fingernail clippings are not enough.
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