This week’s exciting task – besides all the usual end of term stuff like marking, revision sessions, meetings with tutees and dissertation supervisees, writing emails to tutees and dissertation supervisees reminding them of the opportunity to come and see me before the end of term, writing emails to tutees and dissertation supervisees to point out the obvious advantages of coming to talk to me and to express a certain hurt that they haven’t even seen fit to respond… Ahem. This week’s exciting extra task has been to compile and submit a Rebuttal to the reviewers’ comments on a research project application that I’ve been coordinating with colleagues from across Europe. The content was fine, as said colleagues produced lots of great ideas and pithy responses, and my job was largely to hack this down into just 1200 words. A much bigger problem, as far as I was concerned, was the terminology.
I mean, ‘rebuttal’? “A form of evidence that is presented to contradict or nullify other evidence that has been presented by an adverse party.” Is this what we’re calling it now? (more…)