What will you do this afternoon?

Read your monograph

Whatever ideas you may have had for a pleasant way to spend the hours until your planned dinner, the recent delivery of the publication that represents several years of work, both by you and by your research team, pushes them out of your mind. Your first thought is to head straight home, but you don't want to be disturbed by Jie preparing your dinner, so instead you turn around, unlock the door to your room in college and go back inside. As well as the chair you use for tutorials, you have a comfy armchair at the back and it is to this that you repair for a period of perusal.

You recognize much of the contents, of course, but they've been extensively reordered to flow more smoothly and logically from point to point. The flavour text also shows marked improvements, the benefit of input from a bevy of volunteer ghostwriters. What surprises you most is the sheer amount of humour they've managed to inject into what even you have to admit is a remarkably dry subject. It's true that much of it relies on inside knowledge, but twice you actually laugh out loud at the absurdity of the examples chosen to illustrate your assertions.

The monograph is not long, barely more than two hundred pages and time flies so quickly that before you know it, you've reached the bibliography and acknowledgements. So engrossed were you that you didn't notice your body's demands until you finished, but now you need to visit the toilet and also have something to drink. As much as you would like to go back and read some passages again, physical needs are more pressing, so you put the book away and leave your rooms for the second time, realizing how much time has passed and that you need to think about heading home for dinner.