In the Dark

The first quarter of the second Semester at Maynooth University has flown by. I’ve now done three weeks of lectures and even conducted the first class test in the computer lab. It is from the correcting of these submissions that I am now taking a short break to compose this blog.

Amazingly, for the first time ever, there have been no major problems in the Computational Physics lab at all. In previous years, something has always gone wrong but not (so far) this time round. I’m sure our nice new digital display screen has also improved the experience for the students in that they can now actually see the instructions I give them!

I’m actually ahead of the game in my Advanced Electromagnetism module, having done 7 lectures in 3 weeks instead of the usual 6, because I used one of my tutorial slots to give an extra lecture, anticipating that I’d lose a lecture on Good Friday (7th April) as this is a national holiday in Ireland. The following week is a holiday here too. Three weeks from now we have the mid-term Study Break (13th-17th March, ending on St Patrick’s Day), so after the first six weeks of this Semester we get a little more time to relax.

Soon it will be time to write the examinations for Semester 2. I need to think up some questions for Advanced Electromagnetism and Computational Physics. Writing an examination takes the same time regardless of how many students are taking it, but when the class sizes are small it takes much less time to do the marking. There is a large component of continuous assessment in Computational Physics, which means more work for me through the term, but there are only 25 in the class so it’s not too bad. The class for Advanced Electromagnetism is even smaller, which should make my marking workload in June a bit less heavy than it was in January.

Today students were notified of their provisional Semester 1 examination results. I expect I’ll be talking to some of them next week to discuss their options in the light of the outcome. Final marks don’t get confirmed until the Summer, when we have a full meeting of the Examination Board together with the External Examiner. Marks don’t usually change but they can if the Board decides they should.

We often have a seminar on Friday afternoons but we don’t have one today which is why I’ve got time to write this post. Often I go to the National Concert Hall on Friday evenings but I’m not going this evening. I decided to have a quiet night in tonight, as I’ve got something important to do tomorrow. After I finish marking this first class test I think I’ll toddle off home.

This entry was posted on February 17, 2023 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Biographical, Education, Maynooth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.