15 March 2018

Open day as apprentice

Three months into my time here at Bangor University I was at an open day, trying to impress prospective students. Little did I know that a few years later, I would be a bit more heavily involved in these.

When a colleague left I became peer guide coordinator. Peer guides are important for open days; they provide a student perspective and do a lot of legwork, guiding the prospective students and their relatives from one demonstration to the next. So when the organiser of the open days also decided to leave, it was an easy choice to make me take over. And technically, I only take over half; there are open days for prospective students who are deciding where to apply, and different ones for those who have applied and now have to choose which one of their offers they should accept. My colleague Mattias will organise the latter; I will have to do the former. And this would be the last op that kind before I would be responsible for them! Oh dear. I wasn't scheduled to be there, but I decided to be anyway, to see how Andy organised it all.

It was good to do that! Andy kindly told me what I needed to know, and showed me how he did things. And between getting instructions I did the general talking to people if I saw people that looked like they could do with being talked to. I had initially planned to do a bit of marking in between, but that didn't happen. Open days are good days to do some weekend work in the office, as the heating is on! But this time I only benefited from that before the open day kicked off; once it did I was immersed and didn't come out until it was over. And by then the heating was switched off, of course. Oh well.

The next open days are for prospective students who are deciding where to apply, so I will only be the adjunct. It will be February by the time I will have to sort this on my own. I hope all will go well!



The marine biologists flaunt their creatures. One of the guys (Stuart) let me touch his bryozoan! It was alive! That was a first for me...

Andy keeps an eye on the time schedule

Prospective students make a gravity current

Unborn fish (lesser spotted dogfish?). Notice the born versions underneath

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