Choosing the right word

Topics/tags: Language, short

A month or two ago, before we heard about the new tenure-line position in CS, I was reflecting on the current situation in CS. A colleague said that they were surprised that I was not more upset about the situation. What is the situation? There are some negatives: We could certainly use more tenure-line faculty [1] and I’d like us to be able to offer more courses [2]. But there are also some positives: We have a strong core of faculty and we hired some good visitors who I look forward to working with.

So I replied that I was relatively sanguine about the situation. As is too often the case, I sent the email without verifying my language.

But something made me check. I looked up what I’d written. Here’s a definition from Google: optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.

Yeah, that’s about right. I love it when my subconscious chooses the right word.

Too bad it doesn’t tell me how to pronounce the word correctly. My mind says sang wine, but it’s really pronounced sang gwen. I’ll just have to remember that the pronunciation is the singer, not the subject of the song.

[1] That was certainly the case at the time. I still think we could use another one, but we’ll muddle through for the time being.

[2] I’d also like to teach Tutorial some time soon [3].

[3] I keep hoping that if I keep writing about my desire to teach Tutorial, I"ll find a way to do so.

Version 1.0 of 2018-06-09.