Living Without the Bunnies

For the past four years, I sent emails to my family with the subject line "Living with the Bunnies, issue X". This was a reference to the UVic campus; the University of Victoria is inhabited by a large number of rabbits.

These emails contained news about my studies, first getting a B.Mus in Music, and later getting a M.A. (interdisciplinary) in Computer Science and Music. They also contained complaints about my supervisors [1], stories about my students [2], rants about UVic administrative practices (26 pages of ethics approval to run an anonymous web survey!) [3], and all the things that are normal and healthy for a graduate student to be telling their friends on the weekends. I resisted calls to put these on the web in the form of a blog, since some of those stories weren't suitable for public viewing.

[1] I actually didn't have too many complaints about my academic supervisors. "Teaching supervisors" (i.e. instructors that I was TAing for) are another story, though.

[2] Again, I can't think of specific negative stories about my students. But I definitely wanted to be able to mock them privately in the Bunny emails if they had done anything particularly stupid. I also discussed a few assignments in more detail than I'd want to be telling a student, particularly for CSC 110 in the summer of 2008.

[3] Oh, I have plenty of complaints about the ethics review process. :)

Now that I've graduated, I don't expect to have the same amount of stories that shouldn't be made public. Hence the public blog.

The name may change next year once I've started a PhD -- it'll depend on what the mascots (both official and unofficial) of the university / city / country are, and how appealing they are to me. I like cute fuzzy animals, so "Bunnies" struck a chord with me.

(yes, the initial blog entries are pre-dated)