Trivial things that make you happy - Part 3 - The Happyning

Getting another Christmas card in the post today

I came second in our global company quiz

Won the work lotto

After the drama in my TA yes, I walked the long way back to work alone.
This generated two TH's, 1. The number of men* who were sitting outside coffee shops chatting with friends/family/colleagues/teammates.
2. A dog ran up to me for a head rub and the young man who came to take the dog back to its table didn't run a mile from me as I'm so old and fat**.



* I'm a passionate advocate of normalizing men talking to each other in general, even more so outside of alcoholic inspired crap/enviroments.
** Currently dealing with a lot of clients who say this very thing to me to avoid having to do what is needed to improve their situation.

the purple tin wrote: »

Saw a handmade 'Satan, Please Stop Here' poster in someomes window :eek::pac:

I've seen ones along the lines of:

"It's not the dog you should be afraid of, it's the wife"

Scented candles

I bought 4 different types in Ikea, only 2 euro each

Using the vanilla for the next while

Received a thoughtful gift from my Landlady for Christmas.

I was in Galway for a couple of hours today

A long one, and a bit moan-y at first, so apologies:
TH for students saying thank you.


I know third level students have been having a hard time learning online - especially first years -but these last number of months have also been really trying for lecturers. Between new tech, constant changes to working conditions, adapting courses - sometimes with very little notice - and trying to actually facilitate student learning in seminars, it's been a less-than -fun couple of months. Everything is so much more time consuming that usual. And we're currently down nearly a quarter of the workforce in my department because of covid cases, so I've been doing the work of others, too - 60-70 hours per week for the last four weeks just on teaching, with zero time for research. I'm just so tired now.



But today, when I've been holding individual meetings for students, several of them have thanked me for the courses I've run, or for giving detailed feedback, or told me how much they learned. And it means the world. Very few students every say thank you. It's probably just a throwaway couple of words for those who did say it today, but I cannot overstate how much just hearing those words has made my day. I mean I did, of course, make it awkward by thanking them for thanking me, but hey - at least I'm facing in to the rest of the afternoon feeling much better than I did this morning.