New responsibility: peer guides

I mentioned it already: as the most junior member of teaching staff (on a very temporary contract too, so not in a position to be too picky) you can get lots of jobs shoved your way. Another one appeared; the job of peer guide coordinator. The original one, who also was on a temporary contract and who had no faith in the situation improving, had seized an opportunity at Natural Resources Wales and would leave. So I got her task!

Peer guides, by the way, are students who get paid to A) look after freshers during Welcome Week and B) help on open days. They are important! Without students we're nowhere, and the peer guides are involved in attracting them and making their student career start on a high note.

I had one meeting with Kate, the leaving lady, alone, in which she told what to expect. We had another one with one of this year's head peer guides. She was the only one of the four who could make it. Then I had a meeting with both this year's and next year's head peer guides to do the hand-over, None of the old head peer guides stay on! That's unusual. But at least we have some PhD students around who have been head peer guides in the past; they are willing to stand by with advice. I myself am full of good will but have no experience whatsoever. I too have external help if needs be; my colleague Jaco has been peer guide coordinator and is willing to dish out some wisdom if needed.

Just before Kate left she had turned down a peer guide applicant on the basis of low attendance. This student had appealed. So within minutes I had my first serious decision on my plate! I decided to go and meet this student and judge for myself. She convinced me she had had good reasons to be absent, and would be able to avoid absence during crucial times, such as welcome week. She's back in! I hope she'll do well.

I also had a meeting with the admissions committee. As the peer guide coordinator you're automatically part of that. After a lousy start where I was in the booked Meeting Room 1 when everybody else was obliviously sitting in Conference Room 1 we got down to business. We don't have enough peer guides for the upcoming open days; I have to use my charms to try and change that! A responsible job. Watch this space!

Vote with little choice

Everybody is talking about the June general elections, but there also were local elections. For me these are more evocative as I actually get to vote. But for whom? I found out who the candidates were: two Welsh Labour people, three Plaid Cymru people, and one independent candidate. I googled them. No information. I had flyers in the letterbox from all of them but that didn't really help. They all promise the moon on a stick. I wasn't too sure of what to vote. Plaid Cymru has a reasonably good name when it comes to education; I decided that I would go for one of them. The Plaid flyer helped me choose one of them.

Then it was election day; I went to the polling station, where a man pointed out I could vote for three people. Three? That's half of them! But there are three council seats to give away, so you can vote for all three. You don't have to cast three votes, though. And in a way you should cast every vote you can but I figured that either I would vote without choosing by voting for more than one candidate, which seemed silly, or vote for all these Plaid people without making a distinction. I decided to vote for the one person I had picked. Later I thought that was stupid, but well, this time it doesn't make an enormous difference. No parties I really like were competing, no parties I really dislike were competing.

I was still contemplating this when I came across a concept I hadn't heard of; vote swapping. If you live in a constituency where your candidate doesn't stand a chance you can try to find someone (via internet, generally) who lives in a constituency where your candidate does stand a chance but theirs doesn't. You help vote their candidate in in your constituency and the other person helps vote in yours. I think this is mainly a general elections thing, but it could well also work for local elections. And it wouldn't have worked here, I think, as I think in my ward Plaid might sort of win by default, but I liked the idea!

So what was the result? I sort of said it; all three Plaid candidates were voted in. They each got 22-23% of the vote, with the independent person getting 15% and the Labour people 9% each. Two of them already were councillors last time. I hope they will represent me well!

Bank Holiday Run

Monique left on Monday morning. It was not just any Monday though; it was a bank holiday! Which meant I had the rest of the day to fill as I liked. I decided to go for a run in the valley we had been looking down into the day before. I had spotted an old tramway and I figured that would be easy to follow, have a gentle slope, be even and have nice views. Sounded perfect!

It's a while to drive there, but at least I got where I had intended to start. It took a while to find the tramway though; from above things tend to be clearer. And once I found it I also lost it. I then ended up on a country road. I was wearing off-road shoes and here I was, on roads! And the tramway was nowhere to find. Oh well. I had an OK run. And the valley was indeed beautiful!

After some 75 minutes or so I was back at the car. I looked at the map; where had I been? It was easy to reconstruct; the public footpath left the tramway at a point where that country road was really close. Easy to end up on it if you can't find the unmaintained tramway anymore. Oh well. This valley had more to offer; I'd be back! But now it was time for lunch!

I drove down to the nearby reservoir; there was a picnic table there with a view on the water and the mine I had visited a few months earlier. Lovely! On the way back I also parked up the car to have a look at a nice slate mill ruin I had come past. But once I'd seen that it was time to go home. I had some chores to catch up with! My homework, for a start. After the Monday off it would be Tuesday, Welsh class day!

 

Lunch at the reservoir

 

The slate mill

Visit by Monique

Next year we'll have been friends for 25 years! And this month I will have lived abroad for ten years. And this would be the first time Monique would visit me there! Originally, she would come in January, but then one of her dogs died and she postponed the trip. Now the moment had come!

On Saturday early afternoon I picked her up from the station. Great! I took her home and made her tea. She had had to get up really early that day, so we couldn't really do anything very strenuous that day. I suggested we'd have a scamper on Llandwyn island that afternoon. We had to see something beautiful! And we did. And all the while we caught up.

 

Posing on Llandwyn

When we got back we made dinner together. After dinner we talked a bit more in the comfort of my living room. But soon it was bedtime!

The next day we went for a more extensive adventure; I had suggested we'd go and see the Prince of Wales mine, which I had seen from Moel Hebog and which I had failed to run to. We'd walk from Rhyd Ddu. That is a nice distance, not steep (Monique isn't quite used to hills) and gets you into what I imagined would be a stunning valley. And she agreed!

After breakfast we went on our way. And it was a nice day! And the route was nice and clear and also very pretty. By the time we got tot the mine we were rather hit by the wind. We didn't go deep into the valley; Monique wanted to keep the amount of going-down-which-would-necessitate-going up-again limited. But we had a blast! But quite soon we turned back.

Some mining remains 

 Monique happy in front of a drum house

When we had Rhyd Ddu in sight again we sat down for lunch. After that we did an extra bonus mini-walk over the causeway as there was another mine on the other side, but then we went back to the car.

Once home we showered and then read a bit it was time to head for the restaurant. I had booked Dylan's; the sort of go-to place in town. The food was good! And we still had plenty to talk about. But after another cup of tea at home it was bedtime and thus pretty much the end of the visit. The next day she would take the 8AM train back to the airport. Too bad! But it had been a very good visit! And she promised to not wait ten years again. Do come back Monique!

Further up in the dig

This week would be exciting! We had dug upwards once; the first session is the easiest. The next step had looked harder. We'd see soon how it would go. I thought I'd meet Miles at the manager's office but he was a bit late; we arrived at the parking lot at the same time. At least that saved me walking up in my warm furry suit. We got in; this time he had brought resin. I knew that would mean I would have to go and get the resin gun from deeper in the mine. I also wanted to get the longer detonation wire; we had only had the short one and it can be nice to be a bit further away from blasts. And I wanted the long-ish metal rod; if you work upwards, you might sometimes want to prod things from a slightly larger distance than our small crowbar allows. A lot of lugging. I also retrieved a lighter; we now have our breaks in Generator Chamber, but the generator is so noisy it's nicer to switch it off for breaks and light the place with a few candles. But one needs a lighter to accomplish that. Quite soon I was on my way. I came back all sweaty, but with all we needed!

Miles was thinking of making the lowest bit of the new passage a bit wider but I had clambered ahead (what else is new) and had started to have a look at the next step. The previous time I had thought I  had seen that this was a horizontal slab which leaned very heavily against the wall. I noticed now I could worm past. That way I ended up above it; I threw everything down that was loose and noticed the slab was actually only loosely leaning against the wall. Let's get rid of it! That meant getting the drill from Miles. That was the end of his drilling adventures for that night. I tried to drill holes in the slab, which didn't work so well; then I tried to chisel it out of the way, which didn't work so well either, and finally I managed one drill hole. It was just big enough for two charges! That split the rock, but didn't shatter it, so I spent some time trying to chuck both halves down. One half went without much complaining; the other one put up such opposition I had to leave it in place in the end. At least it was out of the way! And next time I can sort it out once and for all.

Not a very clear picture, but the diagonal rock is the one that resisted me, and the light below is Miles' and he is inside the passage we made. We are already quite many meters above the chamber floor!

I also looked ahead; the next stretch was a narrow passage (well, not yet passable, but we'll come to that) between a very large and reassuring rock and the wall. I couldn't see very well what was behind that! But so far it looked all very promising. It was nice to make good progress again after the very short stalling at chamber X...

PGCertHE acquired!

I got my portfolio back! I scored a B. Not bad I'd say. I had to quickly finish it before the teaching would actually start. I know; ideally you would do both at the same time and have them influence each other, but they ho, the world often doesn't work that way. Sometimes one has to be pragmatic! And I've passed, and I'm qualified now! I think the certificates are handed out in autumn; a fair while away. But the work is done! Students, here I come; and this time I'm qualified!

What about not being registered, you may ask? That was sorted too. When I was on my oiriginal job I had a staff ID and all that comes with it: access to university intranet and such. Then I enrolled in the PGCertHE programme, and got a student ID to go with that. It was there but I never used it; all worked fine under my staff ID. It's just that for reasons of bureaucracy one needs to have one. And it turned out that with the new job came a new staff ID, and that staff ID did not give me access to the PGCertHE website, but my dormant, still existent student ID did! Sorted.

Sixteen dissertations

As the most junior member of teaching staff you get all the jobs nobody else wants to do. In that light I got an email last week telling me I had been nominated to second-mark sixteen dissertations. That's a lot! And about half of them are biological. It's a big pile of work. On the other hand, I'm bound to learn something. The topics are all over the place: jellyfish, the Great Barrier Reef, plastic pollution, sediment transport, geoengineering, deep water formation, and whatnot. And I might sometimes just take them home and spend some hours on the couch with a generous supply of coffee within reach. There are much worse things than get paid to read!

 A Lion's mane jellyfish. Photo by Dan Hershman.