I’ve been feeling very tired this week, probably as an after-effect my flying visit to Cardiff at the weekend. I need to learn to adjust the way I plan such trips in view of the fact that I’m getting on a bit. I tried to pack in a lot of visiting and walking about on Saturday which younger me would have managed fine, but I should have taken it easier. I was worn out when I returned to work on Monday and it has taken me several days to get back to normal. I definitely don’t have the energy I used to have. It’s not so much that I mind getting older, it’s just that I have to learn to accept that I need to be a bit less ambitious when I make plans, especially when that involves travelling. I don’t really understand what makes travelling so tiring, as it mostly involves sitting down, but I’ve always found it so, and it’s getting more and more noticeable as time passes.
Term time is passing too. This morning I gave my last 9am Computational Physics lecture of the Semester. This is only Week 9 of 12 teaching weeks, but lectures finish early for this module because for the last few weeks of term the students are working, in teams, on their projects which form an important part of the module. A week today we take a break for Easter (Good Friday being 18th April this year). There will then be a very welcome week off before we return for the last leg of term and, of course, the examinations followed by the marking thereof.
After this morning’s lecture, on the way back to the Department, I was talking to some students about the forthcoming May examinations. I was a bit taken aback to realize that I did my finals precisely 40 years ago. I went on from my undergraduate degree at Cambridge to a PhD DPhil at Sussex. It took me three years to complete that and become a postdoc. Now there’s only a three-year period between now and my retirement.
This week I had my Developmental Review, the first one I’ve ever had at Maynooth. In other places this is called an Annual Appraisal or some such name. I conducted quite a lot of these when I was at Sussex, and was on the receiving end at Cardiff a few times too, but the Developmental Review scheme has only just been implemented in Maynooth University and in any case I am now just an appraisee (reviewee), not an appraiser (reviewer). The idea of these reviews is that the reviewee agrees some goals in a meeting with the reviewer and in two years’ time we meet again and see how well I have managed. In my experience can be a useful process for people who want to advance their careers by getting promoted. In my case those I have neither the desire nor the possibly to get promoted so it’s all a bit futile. I’ll be retiring in the not-too-distant future anyway. There are one or two things I want to finish before I retire so I wrote them on the form. All staff have to go through the process, so that box is now ticked and I can now move on until my next review (which will definitely be the last!)
In the Dark 