Mr Muscle and Ms Marketing

It is rare that the ICLC staff draws attention to the endeavour, initiative and commitment of its working students, the ones without whom we could not operate the programme and keep the building open.

But the week beginning September 26th brought two students to the fore, Cris Ramirez, Mr Muscle, and Melissa Frisco, Ms Marketing, who, I am convinced, could sell anything to anyone, including membership in the Democratic Party to the now non-presidential candidate in 2012, Sarah Palin.

Cris set up the Common Room for the AASAP [American Association of Study Abroad Programmes] conference on Wednesday last.  This involved physical tasks like moving chairs [6 at a time] into the common room and the heavy wooden table from the corner of the room into the hall. He also fixed the newspaper rack and restored them to their original positions after the meeting without prompting! He merits at least three chocolate hobnobs at the next Coffee Talk.

Meanwhile, Melissa volunteered to partner the Director for 8.5 hours at the Fulbright Commission’s annual ‘London College Day’ on Saturday October 1st at Kensington Town Hall. Merely being with the Director for that length of time merits a distinction. College Day involved her in wooing High School and Sixth Form students [and their parents] to choose Ithaca College as their university destination. She excelled in her role, out-Harvarding Harvard and out-Princetoning Princeton, and wiping the floor with Cornell who weren’t even there, possibly because they knew Melissa would be there, and east hill would never outshine south hill in her presence.

Claire, meanwhile, lost out when she spilled her yogurt on to her knitting needle which then nosedived into her printer, jamming it in the middle of a print job for Dr Kidd, whose students thereby missed the starting point of their Wednesday walk. On the Stratford trip, she further blotted her copy book by suggesting that her line manager was ‘prone to mischief’. Sarah betrayed the ICLC’s official sports neutrality policy by openly wearing her Welsh RFU scarf during the hottest week of the year on the feeble excuse that she was cold; this flaunting of her Welshness was deeply offensive at a time when Canada still had a chance to progress if they beat the New Zealand All blacks by more than 30 points. Heather too displayed her irreverence for her adopted country by travelling to France, who just happen to be England’s quarter final opponents this Saturday, and for forgetting item two in the staff code of conduct, that is, birthdays must be celebrated with chocolate cake.  And for the 315th week running, Bill was disqualified for failing to keep his office tidy and leaving the digestives out for the mice to nibble on.

Three cheers for two of our six work study students, Mr Muscle & Ms Marketing.

Ms Marketing, looking for someone to sell the Roman Baths to

Mr Muscle (far right), back when he only merited 2 chocolate hobnobs at Coffee Talk

 -Bill