Agree that that sounds like a winter thing, Liese. Have you tried a light box? The Girl and I love ours. They're quite expensive, but so worth it.

Someone tripped the wrong fucking snowflake.

That is such an great statement, Buffista-style, that I might have to put it on my wall and look at it when either the PhD or the activism is getting me down.

Seska, can you get a student assistant through the university? I don't know if you have anything like work-study there.

One of my study assistants (paid for from a different fund) is a student. But they still need paying - the student voluntary programmes on campus only work at large organisations, e.g. at the local hospital. I should look into whether there might be possibly be any local volunteers available, if I can't sort out the government agency stuff. Good idea - thanks. The other possibility, which is most likely, is that I'll pay £20 out of my £30-an-hour pay to fund an assistant myself. If that's the only way I can teach the class I committed to teaching, I'll have to do it.

The music was mostly 80s with a smattering of hip hop. Was out with friends of mine from bellydance. Home now. Drank an Abita Purple Haze just because I could. Bar owned by New Orleanian is new fave bar with bar where we danced a close second. Pronouns lost.

Fuck, Seska, that totally sucks.

Hey, P-C!! Nilly me the link to your review of House of Leaves, will you? Need to email it to someone.

Ha, I was just showing that to my brother's GF. Hope your friend enjoys it.

It could have been me. Was Jeeves having continued accidents after a UTI was resolved?

Oh, yes. Very much so.

Seska, that is appalling.

I should look into whether there might be possibly be any local volunteers available, if I can't sort out the government agency stuff. Good idea - thanks.

My thought was perhaps you could offer some kind of incentive to students in the class to entice and reward them. Depending on how much assistance you need it might be as little as a candy bar, or as big as a meal that isn't school food (home cooked or otherwise, and depending on how many students are stuck living at the Uni as well as how good the school food is there) - and have them take turns.

I don't suppose it would be possible to persuade the uni to give extra course credit to a single student from the class who might be persuaded to assist on a regular basis? If I were in charge of the world, that would be totally practical. But many forms of bureaucracy would be utterly unable to handle it, and your uni has shown itself to be less helpful than we'd like.

The department doesn't have student assistants they could assign to you for a couple of hours a week? Are there graduate students you could pay a lot less to? (It is probably wrong that I think of grad students as cheap labor, but when I worked at a university, there were always grad students scrounging for money.)

I can't see the university (the one that has taken four months to get me academic support workers and caused all manner of hassle over it) agreeing to give me grad student time for this, especially as there are very few grad students in my department. I could use your idea of sorting out volunteers myself in exchange for meals or similar, Andi, but it would probably be frowned upon by the university as it wouldn't be officially-sanctioned volunteering (but maybe I could organise it very informally with friends of friends). And yes, Ginger, you have a good point that I could possibly pay students less, much as I'd hate doing that. That's another option I can think about if the government agency turns me down. I'm focusing on trying to get them to agree, for now.

Right now I am utterly losing the plot over this. The Girl is downstairs writing out my detailed list of reasons why I need this support worker, in the hope of persuading the government agency. I have to go back to church to sing Evensong tonight, and I just want to sleep. I should go to the doctor's tomorrow, but I am a) afraid of being forced to see a psychiatrist (never goes well for me) and b) worried about all the PhD work I'm missing at the moment. Oh and c) doctors make me cry.

{{{Seska}}}

Sorry I don't know the British university system well enough to have any actual advice for you. (It seems like it's really different from the system at American universities.)

{{{{{Seska}}}}} I'm so sorry you have to deal with this. I hope you can find a solution that works for you.