This always seem to happen when I return from trips to the United States. After a week or two of cramming in all the activities I possibly can, and eating all the wonderful (and affordable!) Americanized ethnic food that I miss when I’m in Switzerland, and being exposed to microbes from another continent, I generally return to Geneva both sick and jet lagged. With “only” six hours time difference to get over, rather than the usual nine from California, I think I would have slept fairly normal hours last night—except that I had a terrible headache that made it hard to get to sleep, and an even worse cough that would wake me up 20 minutes later every time I did.
Needless to say, I am not at work today, although I am making meetings for Monday, consulting on code that I wrote that has been passed on to others, and (obviously) blogging. I need rest, but I also need to remind my body when daytime is, or the jet lag will take over beating me up again.
On a completely different note, my friend Joel back in Berkeley has written a guest post on Cosmic Variance about graduate school, teaching, and the Compass Project. The Compass project is a program at UC Berkeley, run by graduate students, “which supports excellence in science education, especially for women and minorities.” I encourage you to go over and take a look, either to read my arguments with him in the comments about how much graduate programs should emphasize teaching or (better still) to learn about Compass. They’re small, new, and could use more support for the good work they’re doing.
