Dissertation topics allocated

It is done! I managed to allocate every single one of the 193 students a topic and supervisor. It was a bit of a chore but it is done. There are so many students this year! And we did have more teaching staff to distribute them over, but the problem is that it still is a very limited number of members of staff whose topics are popular. I had SO many students who had picked topics from the same five popular people. And you can't give these people infinite numbers of students. So then you have to check who else is willing to supervise the topics of the popular people, and keep shuffling people around until in the end you make it fit.

I really wanted to get it done before the marking would hit. And I didn't quite manage, but it was close! On the afternoon of the day when I could have gone into the field with Dei and Jaco but wasn't really necessary, so opted to stay in the office and get this done, I did indeed get it done. That felt good! But then I had to do a check whether everything was ok. Generally, a few mistakes creep in. And they had. There was one student, for instance, whom I had given a supervisor twice. That sort of thing. But when that was done I made a tidy list and published it to the staff.

I tend to release it to the staff first. And if they are ok with it, I release it to the students. And in the meantime, I can turn to my marking…

 

A deep sea fish; star of a very popular topic. Pic by Theodore W. Pietsch, University of Washington