Student conference imminent

It's a stressful time for our dissertation students! Soon they will present their dissertations to their peers and supervisors. Quite a lot of them will be happy when it's over! And so will I be. Last year I looked forward to it; it's nice to see what these students have worked on for all these months. But then I was just there to judge presentations. Well, and as a promo girl trying to convince students to fill out an important survey. But this year I had to organise the whole thing! And I'm an academic, not an event organiser. But well, a module leader's gotta do what a module leader's gotta do.

I had to book the venue. We don't do it on campus; this is a trick to encourage the students to stay all day. If it's in town they may wander off into the pub after their own presentation! And we want them to stay so they can engage in the question and answer sessions of their peers. And where we do the event there are no pubs or other distractions.

I also had to source extra laptops and projectors as the venue didn't have enough. And I had to order lunch. And make the programme. And make the conference booklet with all 127 abstracts in. And I had to come up with a marking schedule and marking sheets. And think about when, where and how to check attendance.

It's a lot of work! And I'm not trained to do these things (well maybe I am trained for the marking schedules and sheets. But not the rest). And I don't like it. And I have so much other work: organise a field day, supervise my own dissertation students and a MSc student, mark essays for my 1st, 2nd and 4th year modules (or rather, two 1st year modules), and lots of things including some I should do but haven't yet, such as come up with projects for MSci students (that's something different from MSc) and file my timetabling requests. I will be so happy when it's Friday afternoon and all of that is off my shoulders! I think I'll need a drink by then...