Avoiding academic divorce

[David Bean]

I'm a second year now and, like a lot of St. Andreans do at this time of year, I'm beginning to look forward to adopting my own brood of academic children. Reading the thread about 'academic divorce', however, made me wonder how one might go about selecting one's children so as to avoid these kinds of problems coming up in the furure. I want, and intend, to be a good dad, but can anyone shed any light on what this might mean?


I already have one daughter lined up, a first year whom I'm going to adopt next year, and possibly a son, a chap I vaguely know who's starting as a first year next year. I've had a diverse range of experience myself - two mothers and two fathers, to varying degrees of success on both sides.

[Thackary]

Keep in touch with your kids.

When I was a first year, we were always invited to our parents' house every Friday, where we watched Friends, then headed off into town.
We always took a bottle of wine, and often invited our parents to parties and events in our own hall.

Things have moved on, and now I'm the dad. Although I'm no longer at university, I'm still in touch with most of my kids, and strangely enough I keep adopting more, who have lost touch with their own academic family.

The key to the whole thing is to adopt people you already know and like. You're much more likely to stay together.

I wonder if it would be possible to put together an academic family tree for St Andrews...?
Now that would be a fun project for the Summer...

[Blessed Benediction]

Things have moved on, and now I'm the dad. he says breaking out the Werther's Originals.

a family tree of St Andrew's would just be one very very big jumpled mess of lines like a hyper-tangled ball of string. & it probably would have to be three dimensional.

can't give too much more advice on the being a good father thing, being a 1st year. Thackary seems to have given a good answer from the looks.

[hr]watches should have a smiley face on them as it's always time to be happy

[James Baster]

A website to do a massive academic tree thing; would require people to vuluntarily put there family tree into it. Very difficult to do :- 1) People will be known by different names to differnt friends: how do you ID someone? 2) How on earth do you model all the tricky realationships like "he's my third mum"

Could be intresting tho, especailly with a "Six degrees of St. Andrews Familys" search feature tacked on the side

If I get bored enought this summer ...

James "Nope, Still No Revision" Baster

[Valen_gr]

[s]James Baster wrote on 17:03, 22nd May 2003:
like "he's my third mum"


LoL, Now that's a neat trick!!


[hr]
where's spoon????
-There is no spoon!!

[David Bean]

[s]Blessed Benediction wrote on 15:55, 22nd May 2003:
[i]Things have moved on, and now I'm the dad. he says breaking out the Werther's Originals.[/i]

LOL, good call!

I was told that it used to be that there were two main 'families' in St. Andrews, which could, I suppose, be planned out into trees. One of them was headed by Barry Joss (this is at the time when he was Rector's Assessor), and one by... not sure. Of course, contacts are always important when it comes to academic families, but I was told that it was necessary to get into one of these two big families (dynasties, perhaps?) if you wanted to get into the Union. I don't think that's so true these days, at least from what I've seen. It can't hurt, though, to have an army of willing volunteers on your side...

[Dj Balloon]

Fortunately things have moved on from the archaic days of Mr Joss. Now all we need to get into the Union is a Matriculation card