How it always happens

You might say that I obsessively check my department mailbox. It's the first thing I do whenever I'm anywhere near the University. Okay, so I haven't received any mail for a month and a half. What if there's something there for me and it waits a whole day?

However, it seems like I am the living proof of that whole "watched pot never boils" thing. The last time I went to Saskatchewan, I returned to find a letter from my Faculty informing me that I couldn't register because my commitee hadn't been put together yet. I didn't get this letter until after my department had taken care of it and I'd received an e-mail telling me I was free to register. (It's probably for the best that I missed that letter; I'd have been freaking out until I knew it was okay to register, especially because the letter had scary warnings about how I'd have to drop out of the program if my supervisor didn't deal with this soon.)

Today, I checked my mailbox for the first time in a week. I had four pieces of mail: a cheque, the confirmation that I'd been granted travel funding for last week's conference, and everything I need for starting to TA next Tuesday.

This is either a lesson that I should check my mailbox more obsessively, or that I should only check my mailbox once a month, to encourage the mail-getting.

(Side note: apparently, Grad Studies has added a requirement for Travel Funding. I need to provide them with a "brief report outlining the work carried out with the aid of this grant." How brief can I be? I probably should leave out any references to That Man Who Yelled At Me and the cold I picked up at the conference. Do they want to know more about my paper? Do they want to know about the conference?)