20 years at Keele, starting no. 21!

I just went through the first week of a teaching term at Keele for the 21st time! I started here in September 1987, so I've completed 2o years and am embarking on number 21! Most of this year's students weren't even thought of when I started teaching here. Scary.

Scarier still is the fact that even after all these years I find it so difficult to get everything done efficiently in the time available. The way my teaching works out gives me a particularly busy first few weeks: I am course director and I lead a lot of modules, so I end up giving the first few lectures in a lot of courses. Next week, for example, I have 16 hours of actual timetabled classes, each of which requires loads of preparation, web-page back-up, handbooks, etc, so there's probably over 200 hours of work gone into that one week's teaching. So, when the teaching is only one little part of my job, you can see why I've not had a lot of time to keep this blog up-to-date hour-by-hour as I'd intended! In a typical day at this time of year there are simply no gaps, no "moments" in which to do things like that.

Last week all the new students arrived, so I was involved in registration, meeting all of them, giving the induction talk, seeing my "personal tutees" for a preliminary meeting, etc. I also had to spend half a day at the University Appeals meeting, trying to see if anything could be done for a number of students who were appealing against University decisions, and was involved in all sorts of annoying time-consuming stuff (don't get me started on the "CSP Fair" that I was supposed to be at) as well as more useful tasks such as seeing a lot of dissertation students. I enjoyed giving the first lecture in (the 21st run of) my "Glaciers" module. I don't know whether the students enjoyed it as much as I did! It has changed a lot over the years. Even the technology of teaching has changed a lot. When I started, I didn't even have a computer. Now I start the first lecture with a "Google Earth" sequence before using a PowerPoint presentation supported by a Virtual Learning Environment. Also, I know a bit more about glaciers than I did in 1987. In fact, a lot more IS KNOWN about glaciers, so what I say is a bit different now than it was then. For a start, in 1987 I couldn't refer students to a textbook that I'd written myself!

I'm a bit stressed out about the fact that my present teaching and admin load is preventing me doing any research or writing. I have some deadlines coming up, so I will HAVE to do something about that over the next few weeks and MAKE some time...