Flashes of Panic

A few years ago—perhaps when I was a sysadmin and therefore a sort of de facto part of the support staff—I realized that it pays dividends to be on the good side of whatever support staff keeps the basics happening in the department I’m in. Applying to grad school really drove that home; it didn’t help me get accepted, but it did help me round up recommendations from absent-minded professors.

Today was the last meeting of the semester for the undergraduate group I mentor for, and I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies from my mother’s recipe. (Actually, it’s Marge Standish, but it might as well be my mother’s. There are several things my mother does which I will never, as long as I live, be able to match, and two of them are chocolate chip cookies and apple pies.) Best batch of cookies I’ve made in years—maybe decades.

After our lunch meeting, I left about a dozen and a half extras in the department office. Subject line of the email I got from the Staff Assistant an hour or so later:

You get an A++!

Now Playing: Living It Up In The Garden from ‘Mousse by The Nields

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