Gone judging

In our department we keep the service assignments quiet. This is entirely due to the existence of a single committee: it's better if the students don't know who's making admission decisions in a particular year. That's why I've been vague about my giant service responsibility here, just because it's the department culture. But it occurs to me that you guys are highly unlikely to use that knowledge for evil purposes. I CERTAINLY HOPE there are no Gladlyville U students reading my blog [insert shudder], but even if there are I am almost done with those rankings. 

I am watching a lot of application videos, and reading a lot of personal statements, and drawing a lot of distinctions while trying to avoid Lake Woebegone syndrome. It's a little strange, how even in our internal ratings we don't want to say that people are below average. It makes me want to say GUYS WE ALL TOOK STATS THE DEFINITION OF AVERAGE IS THAT HALF THE PEOPLE ARE BELOW IT. HALF, NOT 10%.

But probably I'll just say that here, and then queue up another applicant video.