In the Dark

Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof…

I’ve just graded the last of my assignments for this (academic year). I had a bigger class than usual for Computational Physics this time round, so it took much longer than usual to mark the project component. It always takes a while because I not only have to read and grade the reports, but also look at the code they submit and run it to check that it works. I uploaded the final grades to our system just now and although I finished later than planned I was relieved to see that I’m not the last lecturer to do so!

What happens next is that all the marks from all the modules will be collated and cross-checked. Then we will have a meeting of the Departmental Examination Board (on Thursday morning) to go through the results in the presence of our External Examiner. Since this is the end of the academic year, we will also look at the final grades of those students who are completing their studies this year in order to consider the classification of their degrees. There may also be some who are not qualified to graduate and may have to repeat failed examinations or other assessments. Another (pleasant) duty of our Examination Board on Thursday will be to award prizes for the best performance, not just for finalists but for students at every stage, including the first year.

I was teaching a module for the Department of Engineering last Semester so I should attend their final Examination Board too. Many of our students at Maynooth take joint degrees, in which case their final degree classification depends on grades from two Departments. For that reason, there is an overall Examination Board at which the marks are combined. Fortunately, only the Head of Department (who is not me) has to attend that one.

If all goes to plan, students will receive their final marks on Friday 27th June. It’s a lengthy process so as to allow plenty of opportunities to check and validate the different stages. After that, on Tuesday 1st July, we have a consultation day at which students can ask for advice about repeat examinations, etc, and after that we have to make sure repeat examinations are available. The repeat examination period is Wednesday 6^th August to Tuesday 19^th August.

Between the end of this week and the repeat exams, perhaps I’ll get a bit of time to do some research…

This entry was posted on June 9, 2025 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags Computational Physics, Examinations. 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.