So - what is the deal with the AntiBlack 'awarding gap' in UK higher education?
@Wonkhe @officestudents @nusuk @UWankings @BantshireUni
#BlackAwardingGap #highered

APPLYING TO GRAD SCHOOL, POST #18: INTERVIEWS (PART 4)

You've finished your interview(s) and you're tired, but it's not over quite yet! What should you do after interviews?

@OpenAcademics @PhDVoice #AcademicChatter #AcademicTwitter #phdchat #gradschool #firstgen #nontraditional

Firstly, congratulate yourself for making it through the interview! Take some time to relax and reflect on your experience, especially if you have forthcoming interviews for other programs. Take note of questions and positive and negative moments that stuck out to you.

*Huge note: PLEASE try not to beat yourself up too much if you didn't know the answer to every question in the interview. Depending on the type of interview (and interviewer) you had, there might have been many difficult questions presented to you, specifically for the purpose...

of not only seeing how much you know, but also seeing how you think and process problems when you *don't* know the answers. If you can, reason your way through the question and explain yourself as well as you can, so that they can see your way of thinking, but if you truly...

have no idea, it's perfectly fine to just say that you don't know, as opposed to rambling nonsensically and hopelessly.

That was all to say, try to make notes of tough questions so that you can be prepared for similar questions in the future, but don't beat yourself up if you...

As my Christmas present to you all, here is a list of my top-10 metal tunes of 2020, in no particular order. It's a mixed bag of genres and styles, but they're all bangers!

First up, The Terror Begins by Make Them Die Slowly. Horror-movie inspired grind/black/industrial from Mick Kenney and Duncan Wilkins.

Next, Northern Irish thrashers @gamabomb, with Lords of the Hellfire Club from their excellent new album Sea Savage.

Now for something a bit off the beaten track: brilliant New York black metal experimentalists @imperialnyc's City

Time for something a bit more accessible: this year's best symphonic metal from Sweden's @eleine. Here's the title track from the fantastic 'Dancing in Hell' album.

You know what I don’t miss? Parent teacher conferences.

Most of Rocketkid’s teachers were lovely, but we had two that still stick out in my mind as sad/hilarious.

The first one, he was in elementary school. The teacher said it was ‘important’ for us to come in.

1/

So we worried about that for two days until the meeting. What could be wrong? It’s scary for parents to be left hanging like that.

So we meet his teacher, goatee and sunglasses...we live in the boonies and yet there’s something here like he’s trying to be a player.

2/

Not like a lady-player, like he’s got an image of himself in his head. We like teachers, but this guy’s manner is just weirdly kind of pushy a little bit.

Anyway, we sit does in the kid chairs, he’s behind his desk, again, weirdly focused on ‘power,’ somehow.

No idea why,

3/

We ask about our son, he acts as if he forgot that’s why we’re there, says some random stuff, all normal, nothing at all worthy of a conference. I mean, contact and communication is important, but thus just feels off-the cuff entirely.

4/

So then suddenly he gets really intense, but pretends being casual. Like it just occurred to him.

And he says to me, ‘So, I hear you’re a writer.’

What?

I tell him yes, I write comics and some animation and stuff.

He says. ‘I looked you up.’

5/

The Google Doc where the San Francisco school board did it's research for deciding which historical figures to cancel is public, and it's hilariously bad

The best part is the "Notes" tab, where someone lays out why the stated reasons are complete BS.

Case in point: "Lowell High School must be renamed because the namesake was a racist."

Notes: "Yeeeah, no, it wasn't named after that guy at all."

(they voted to rename anyway)

Another example: "Paul Revere led the Penobscot Expedition, which led to the colonization of the Penobscot."

Notes: "What? No. The Penobscot expedition was fought against the British, in Penobscot Bay. The natives weren't involved."

(voted to rename anyway)

"Dianne Feinstein was responsible for evicting an entire Filipino neighborhood!"

Notes: "That happened in 1977. She wasn't mayor until a year later."

(voted to rename anyway)

"Abraham Lincoln executed 38 Dakota Indians!"

Notes: "The Minnesota governor was going to execute *300*. Lincoln intervened when he had no obligation to, and saved the vast majority of them."

(voted to rename anyway)