A sociological lunch
Dec. 27th, 2014 06:44 pmLeisurely start this morning, with a late start and a gentle run. No sign of the big raptor at Top Green today; instead the park was full of smaller birds which had obviously been frightened off by it yesterday.
A group of friends, mostly pater's former colleagues, came for lunch — which, for the first time in days, contained something other than potatoes and made me realise just how much plant protein had been missing from my recent diet.
With a number of eminent academics gathered together, much of the table talk naturally centred on the results of the resent Research Assessment Framework and the performance of Warwick in particular. Although the university as a whole had done reasonably well, the performance of the Department of Sociology had done badly, falling something like 20 points since the REA in 2008. The general feeling among the crowd, most of whom had spends years there at professorial levels, was one of amazed disbelief: just how could things have gone so wrong, so quickly.
A group of friends, mostly pater's former colleagues, came for lunch — which, for the first time in days, contained something other than potatoes and made me realise just how much plant protein had been missing from my recent diet.
With a number of eminent academics gathered together, much of the table talk naturally centred on the results of the resent Research Assessment Framework and the performance of Warwick in particular. Although the university as a whole had done reasonably well, the performance of the Department of Sociology had done badly, falling something like 20 points since the REA in 2008. The general feeling among the crowd, most of whom had spends years there at professorial levels, was one of amazed disbelief: just how could things have gone so wrong, so quickly.