If you are an academic blogger, there is a survey worth filling out. Below is some information from the student, studying at the University of Chicago who is writing her masters (long paper?) on the topic of academic blogging. I am not sure if I should even fill it out because I tend to use my blog as my escape from academics though from time to time I can’t hold back and write something quasi academic.

Hi. My name is Tina Huang, and I’m a Masters student at the University of Chicago. I am currently conducting a study on academics and their opinions on blogging. I am examining how people perceive this new Internet medium and how beneficial this new technology is to the academic community. If you are an academic and you either read blogs or write a blog pertaining at all to your field of study, please take some time to complete this survey. All information collected in this survey will remain confidential. If you have any questions or concerns, please email me. Thanks!

So today my order of sinus busterarrived in the mail. When I returned from the humid heat of PR to the dry heat of my apt, which I think has pipes directly connected to hell, my sinuses protested in despair. I think I am over the worst of it but while my sinuses were raging in pain, I first tried rinsing my sinuses with cayanne and water and then I decided to opt for something a *little* less intense, which is where the sinus buster comes in. So far I have nothing to say about it except that it felt much better going up my nostrils than my homemade concoction. If you do a google search on sinus buster there is tons of hype that seems a bit fishy to me so I will report back if the stuff does any good (or damage).

So this has been one of my most prolonged silences on satoroams; the reasons for absence are many and not worth listing here. I think the hefty snow, swirling at high speeds to only gently land on the ground has stirred me out of this writing lull.

It is now storming hard out, its effect at once being one of intensity, the wind howling, bordering on an angry tone, yet the blanket of white, the empty streets ushers in a peaceful silence. This duality captures what I feel about the administration’s decision to provide full health insurance for all PhD Students funded with stipends in the Social Science division, which may also be soon adopted by the humanities division. I am happy that student protest has had an effect, yet not all that happy (one may say peeved) at how we were notified (we were not) and how a solution was found only for future students, leaving current ones out in the cold, bearing the brunt of high costs, surely only to go one way: up.

Last fall I help start SOSHI knowing that some noise, press, and dialogue might change the U of C’s problematic policy of giving all the biological and physical science PhD students health insurance (which they can do because those dept have larger budgets thanks ot US gov grants) while basically turning a blind eye to the SS, Humanities, and Divinity school students.

With sky rocketing rates and general student ignorance about this policy, we provided some information, made some noise, and eventually the administration and board of trustees noticed although they basically refused to dialogue with us, in fact, for the past months they have told us that the administration was doing nothing to address this problem. And in the last few days, while we were hearing news of this new health insurance proposal, other administrators acted as if this was not happening. I find this entirely perplexing unless they woke up to this problem last week, and in one day drafted a proposal that was agreed to by the division deans the next day. In other words, highly unlikely.

On the one hand, this news is a clear victory. Future U of C Social Science PhD students who are funded won’t have to worry that by the time they finish their tenure at U of C they will be paying the price of a small Eastern European (or now Chinese) car for health insurance. On the other hand, their policy sends a message that current students don’t matter; they are left to entirely fend for themselves, including future unfunded students. Why not find a solution that positively impacts the entire U of C community? Why not provide subsidies for current students (or those in the first three-four years of the program); Why not cap the rate of increase so at least student can realistically know their costs? There are many