Full of Metal!

Re-enrolment day is not the funnest day ever. It involves sitting in a very noisy hall and approving the course choices of a few hundred students. This means signing their pieces of paper, having first checked how many credits they got in English in 2005. We did this for three and a half hours straight. There were a few interesting observations to be made, which I shall list in easy-to-digest form, thusly: 1. Students in mufti at the end of the holidays seem to be either showing off their awesome tans (and thus wearing the skimpiest outfits possible) or declaring their membership of a social group (such as punk, mod or so forth). There were some interesting fashion choices at the fringes (most students, to be honest, were wearing either jeans + t-shirt or shorts + t-shirt). 2. Students love piercings! There were a striking number of nose, lip, eyebrow, and uppper ear piercings with really big jewellery stuffed in them. These will, of course, have to be removed before next week. 3. Some 6th formers, who should be either 15 or 16, are absolutely huge and sound like James Earl Jones. I swear that there were kids signing up for 6th form who made Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed look like a toddler. 4. Beards, though not popular, were in the hizzouse. Two of my former students had grown awesome beards over the holidays, one a full beard, and the other a kind of Abe Lincoln meets Skater beard. Heh. 5. Students are loud. Loudly loud. I grew tired in the vocal region from having to raise my voice to be heard by students sitting across the table from me, just because the hall itself was filled with chatting teenagers. 6. Catered lunches are awesome. We don't get many of them in the teaching profession (they are one of the benefits of going on courses), but that just means that when they do come along they're appreciated all the more. I should be working. I am at least at work, and have sorted out a network cable for the computer in my block, but I should really try to get as much as possible done before lunch time. It would not be so cool to have to come back after lunch.