head-scratching

I am looking at websites of US universities and there are lots of things I don't get about US academia.

The word 'faculty' used as a collective noun, in a similar way to 'staff', but always 'faculty' never 'the faculty'.

Professors whose title is Dr.

Everyone has a middle initial and uses it.

A sort of lack of departments. Maybe they just call them something else.

My head hurts. I'm listening to a horrible classic fm type radio station viw i-Tunes on the office mac. The music's OK, but it's all chopped up into little bits, like someone's taken a selection of classical and baroque CDs and put them all into one big shuffle. Which is probably what it is. With a teeth-setting-on-edge computerised voice in between tracks telling you what each one is.

Urgh.

What I really want to listen to is Radio 3, but I can't make Safari find the plug-in to make realplayer work. So I'm stuck with this.

I think I'm stressed because I know I've got to write an essay tonight, but first I've got to do some work and what I need to do is fairly uninspiring and mindless and involves negotiating US university websites which are unfamiliar and therefore irritating.

Better stop and get back to it then.