Bless you

Tomorrow morning I have to get up early and be in College much earlier than I have gotten used to recently. The last week of any lecture block is typically characterised by a sudden flurry of activity as all assignments for the courses are due. These assignments make up 30% of your overall mark so, although they are not crucial, it is still worthwhile to do them properly. The reason I have to be in early is that tomorrow we have to present a poster for my class in Project Management. Then on Friday is the deadline for our Marketing essay. Both projects are group assignments which means we carry them out in our allocated "syndicate groups". No, I am not kidding. That really is the official term they label us by. I think it makes us sound like some white collar crime organisation but is is probably meant to make us feel like the budding business people that of course we are.

For our presentation tomorrow we have chosen a somewhat unusual topic. Since the course is on Project Management most groups have chosen to work on things like the Wembley stadium, the Sydney Harbour Bridge or some other major construction project. We have decided to emphasize the fact that we are doing a degree in Health Management instead and are discussing the management of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong. It is an interesting topic but, as it doesn't really fit the frameworks we have been taught in class which were often designed for construction or IT type projects, it is not an easy one. For our marketing essay we have taken a similar approach. I am so sick and tired of hearing about Easyjet, Tesco or the iPod. All my classes recycle these same examples over and over again. There is some logic to it but it is not something that interests me personally. Our essay instead deals with marketing of Tamiflu, the anti-flu drug.

As you can imagine a lot of my reading over the past few days has focused on infection risks and viral spread. I think I may have discovered a new method of disease transmission in the process. I now have reason to suspect that viruses can be transmitted from computers to humans. For two days now I have been sniffling and coughing. I have already had to restock on Kleenex. I can only hope that it is flu rather than SARS.