New Year, new field trip with the students in my "Ice and Oceans” module. It is a lovely trip! Even though sometimes, it suffers from difficult weather. And last year, a whole new source of stress reared its head; my first aider didn't appear. The location where we would meet has no telephone signal or internet signal, so I couldn't contact him, or his line manager, or anyone else for that matter. I had to make the split decision whether I was going to let the trip go on or not. I decided to go for it. I am a trained first aider myself. And first aiders are almost always only there for just in case. But it did make it stressful!
This year I really didn't want that to happen again, so I asked our head of technical staff (who also function as the first aiders) if he could make as sure as he could I would indeed have a first aider appearing this year. He decided to go with an entirely different one. That suited me fine! I had faith he would appear. But the day before, a different issue arose. Lynda, the other member of academic staff who always goes with me, wasn't feeling well. Would she be able to make it the next day?
The next morning the answer came: no, she wasn't feeling sufficiently well. So again this would be a two staff trip. There's not much margin for error with that. Maybe next year I should book myself a demonstrator in case something like that happens yet again.
Apart from Lynda not being well, everything else looked fine. I was prepared, the coach arrived on time, almost all students showed up, the sun was shining, and Pete (the first aider) was already waiting for us when we got to Pen-y-Pass. All good! So the students subdivided themselves into small groups at the parking lot, and received the materials they needed per group, and then we were go.
It was such a beautiful walk in weather like that! And along the way I did show the students examples of what they would be looking for, and examples of things they could mistake for what they would be looking for.
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| The walk up |
Once at location, I did another brief, and then the students fanned out to find things to measure. By that time I was desperate for coffee and cake. But I also was keen to check whether all students were indeed measuring what they should be measuring, and not anything else. So I managed to consume both coffee and cake while walking from group to group. Most groups were doing absolutely fine!
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| Students getting on with it |
There were two groups of which it was a vital that I found them. They were not actually measuring what they should have been. If you get that sort of data in the data set, it becomes really hard to interpret! So I helped them find a better spot.
Then it finally was a bit calmer. There was still time to spend; the coach wouldn't be back for a while, so I could sit down with Pete and have my sandwiches and my tea. That was nice. Some of the students just went on a small explore of the surroundings.
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| The surroundings |
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| Cheerful selfie |
When that was done I started rallying the students again. They were quite spread out. I wanted to do a quick debrief, and then we could all walk back to the parking lot together. I wanted to be there before the coach; I was sure some people would have to go to the loos. And the ladies’ toilets might get some queues…
I was the last one to go to the loo, and when I came out the coach was there. Mission accomplished! We had pulled it off again, even with one person down. And how! The day before had been a complete washout, and we had been so lucky to exactly hit a window of great weather. But I was knackered by the time we were done. I suppose it was the being responsible for how 39 students were doing, on my own, had taken it out of me a bit. But soon afterwards I would find out if we would have beautiful data this year. I had good faith!
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