This week has been quite something though! I met my tutees at Trevs. I can’t believe how nervous I was, more so than my last job interview. And we had a quiz on Tuesday, we didn’t win but I thought we’d done rather well (especially as some teams had TWO tutors and some freshers reps too!) I remembered that Mork came from Ork, but should have had more confidence that IBM made the first floppy disk. I was also mistaken for a fresher by another fresher at the bar. So that means I can wipe eight years off my age, I’m 18 again!

I did two days of Freshers Fayre and it almost killed me. By Wednesday afternoon I was a babbling wreck downing Red Bull to keep me awake. But Tuesday was lots of fun, and I have lots of pointless freebies. Our sparkly bug was possibly the best freebie (we were told this on numerous occasions) but the plastic sombrero and stick on moustache were also pretty impressive.

Back in 2001 as a Fresher I heard rumours of free pizza at Freshers Fayre. I was thoroughly disappointed to discover this was a lie. Eight years later as the smell of warm dough and melted cheese wafted across the room the 18 year old me was incredibly excited… and it kept the 26 year old me in lunch for two days! And it wasn’t just pizza that was free – cakes, biscuits, sweets… I tell you Freshers Fayre is not the place for those on a diet. Or those who have let there exercising lapse the past few weeks… oops!

The trauma of Freshers week is now over and I’m taking a couple of days off to recharge and recover. And bake. I need to make cakes for tutor hour on Tuesday!

Before you know it’ll I’ll be back to my blogging self.

p.s. If you are in Durham – Nichols make very very very nice cakes, which I ate too many of at Freshers Fayre! They also make nice sandwiches too. I think it might be my new favourite place for baked goods!

Unfortunately it seems I underestimated what summer means in the life of a university support department. Back in May I was happily agreeing to all sorts of projects and bits of work thinking that June through to September would be months of chilled out yet productive bliss. Without undergraduates to disturb us, and many academics off doing research, I imagined the university would be a place of calm and tranquility.

How wrong was I? I should know better really. Five years ago I was Vice President in SUBU and have done all of this before. The summer was filled with training and preparation for the academic year ahead. Somewhere along the line my brain had been wiped of this insider knowledge and I have been bobbing along in blissful ignorance completely unaware that from June onwards things only get busier.

So here I am, one more week before the Freshers arrive working from home on my “day off”, tragically behind because my naïvety about my workload mean there is not a chance that everything people want done for the 5th October is going to be finished. Over the past couple of weeks I have been doing damage control and using the words “sorry but that isn’t going to happen until the end of October” a lot.

In the end this week I have been absolutely shattered. So exhausted that I knew going to London this weekend as planned would just leave me even further behind and possibly in bed with a migraine by the middle of next week, neither of which I can deal with happening. The greatest sadness is that I was due to go and see off my friends El & Mark as they head of on an adventure to live and work in Sydney for the next couple of years. For missing that I am very sorry.

My lesson has been learned though.

Summer = Busy.

By the end of the year I will hopefully have ploughed through most of the projects I over-promised and have so far under-delivered on. And then in January I will start preparing for 2010/11. Next summer isn’t going to catch me out… And by the end of next September I’ll be a graceful swan when it comes to navigating the demands of the new academic year. Well I can dream!

Everything seemed fairly normal until after lunch when I traipsed around the library with the photographer trying to find students to take photos of in a library setting. The only weirdness in that is that you usually don’t spend a Monday being a prop in photos (to think I may feature in Durham University prospectus – enough to scare any potential student off!)

Settling back down to get work done there was a bright flash and a loud bang. No rain, and bizarrely still blue skies outside. But the computers died. Some restarted. Some had warning messages. One rebooted and returned with the green screen of death. And one lone computer kept showing the library screensavers… rather like the headless chicken that’s body hasn’t realised its head had disappeared.

It was all very eerie and I was sure that we were trapped in an alternate universe. I was expecting (and still am hoping a little) that David Tennant would come striding into the Library as the rain started falling upwards and the Judoon began milling about scanning the staff and students. (For those non-Doctor Who fans this is a reference to Season 3 Episode 1 ‘Smith & Jones’)

Whilst in the middle of my overactive imagination heading off to the Tardis I was sidetracked by Krista who was trying to find a new owner for a gorgeous pair of sparkly silver shoes.

In true Cinderella style others had tried them on and they’d been too big or too small. Krista is a size 6 and they had been too big for her. Despite being a 5.5 I couldn’t resist trying them on (as any true shoe lover will understand) but as I slipped them on, like Cinderella before me, they fit perfectly.

With many hours of Monday left having already had a Doctor Who and a Disney moment who knows what will happen next… is it too much to hope that I will find myself snapped up for my first publishing deal?!