Trying week

At the end of the week I was quite tired! But I don't think that's unexpected. It's a busy time! I have to prepare my lectures as I go along; in summer I was busier with new lectures (mainly for the second semester) and organisation of new modules. And marking this, that and the other. And there is a lot more happening,

On Monday I had a reasonably quiet day. Good! But Tuesday the week sped up to trying velocities. I went into the field with the students. I am responsible; I do get people helping me, but I have to keep an eye on if everything works the way it should. And sometimes the people helping you out don't have an equally keen eye on things that may be going wrong. You are quite alert the entire time! That evening I had Welsh class. A long day, altogether!

The next day I had been dreading a bit: it would start at 9AM with a two hour lecture for Lynda. Lecturing stuff you don't know an awful lot about, and of which you haven't made the slides, and for which you didn't get a lot of time to prepare is not very inspiring! I did it but didn't feel very good about it.

I then had a lecture of my own in the same lecture theatre. That was better! At least I had made these slides. And there was enough time in between lectures to go to the loo and get a coffee refill.

Then I had a tutorial with my own students. That was fun! But at the end of it, I had half an hour to get to Menai Bridge and get ready for a meeting. Oh dear. I managed to rush to the office, and cram two sandwiches into my system before the meeting started.

The meeting was supposed to be finished by half past three. It wasn't! It kept going. At some point I had to leave to go to the loo. You can only hold it so long! And then finally, at a quarter past four, we were done. My brain was fried. But two of the other participants of the meeting immediately came up to me. One wanted to discuss a grade for a MSc thesis. The other one wanted to talk through the meeting the next day; we would be presenting some stuff to all the other staff. Better know what we were talking about!

It was a quarter to five when we were done. Finally I could eat and drink something without hurry, and have a look at my emails.

The Thursday and Friday weren't particularly busy with contact hours, but there was a lot to do: I had to collate and process the data gathered during the field day; I had to collate the results from an online test I had set; I had to prepare for the Open Day that would take place that Sunday, and I had to prepare a lecture for the dissertation students. And prepare the next of Lynda's lectures. And do all other things that come in between; mark a PGCertHE portfolio, give a student feedback on a draft essay, prepare the upcoming lectures, process the outcomes of the meeting we had had. A long week! And the weekend would involve quite some work too. But hopefully, things will be getting better after that. At some point I will have been done with my lectures and then I have more time for the assignment work that has to happen too!