More modules gone

I was just doing some work in the office when there was a knock. It was my colleague Mattias. He came to talk about my climate module. It needed some work. I was getting to that slowly! I had taught it for the first time without any preparation, as they hired me just as the module started. I wished they had hired me a month earlier so I could prepare! You can't just teach a 4th year module just like that. And the year after I knew a little bit earlier I would teach it, but not by much. And then there were the years when I got landed with more and more new modules so i did improve the module, but never rigorous enough.

And now Mattias offered to take over and change things. And I said yes! I had asked management to get rid of some tasks as I figured I was overburdened, especially in the second semester. So if someone volunteers to take something off me, I'm happy! So there we go. I already lost the responsibility for one module and now I lost one more. Or rather, two; the climate module turned out to be two modules. We run it for both third and fourth year students, and the lecture are done combined. So the teaching load does not increase with the addition of the third year version of the module, but it does increase the burden of admin. The third year module came falling out of the sky one year! Nobody had warned me this module existed, and then I suddenly was responsible for it. Oh well. We pulled it off.

Anyway. So this year I am still responsible for these modules. Will the teaching and marking load change too? I don't know; that depends a bit on how we organise it next year. We shouldn't increase it but maybe we will tone it down! And maybe Mattias will now get to to the bulk of the marking. That's what you get if you are the module leader...

Only after I had said yes I realised that this will probably work against me. If I now am only module leader on one module I will probably get landed more tasks! And these will be new, and I was just hoping to not take on new tasks for a while. Everything you do for the first time takes a lot of work! But well, I said it now. And I suppose it makes more sense to have a physicist to a climate module than a geologist. So we'll see how this pans out! And now I first have to get through these modules myself. When that is done the semester will be over. And then we'll see how it went!