campus day one roundup

The star of the day was definitely the iPad. It’s perfect for campus use, at least on any campus with wifi everywhere like ours and most others. The laptop can stay at home now and rest its increasingly weary bones. Coming up on age 2, it’s well into middle age for a computer.

One special thing about Graduate Student Orientation today, where I briefly spoke about grants and ethics committees… The first crop of entering Ph.D. students in the history of our university. They are in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and applied engineering, all very strong areas at AUC. After 91 years, we are finally a doctoral institution.

And not only is the new office nice (I had seen it before many times, but without the new furniture), but the guys who moved my boxes actually unpacked and shelved all the books as well. I was expecting to blow a couple of hours on that today, but they beat me to it.

Still, it’s Ramadan, and you have to slow down and adjust your expectations during Ramadan. Things are open at strange hours, and you have to get into the spirit of the season and not try to be pushily efficient when people are that thirsty. Going without food all day isn’t especially hard. It’s the water that gets you.