Whew!

Can you sense my relief and exhaustion? That's right: this week brought to a close a full four weeks of teaching. It was gruelling, let me tell you. Even worse is the knowledge that I'll have to start up teaching again a mere 2 months from now!

But seriously, while there's less teaching here, it's made up for in many other ways. For example? How about my 90 minute 'admissions committee' meeting today, or the 3 hours of candidate interviews I conducted earlier in the week. All of those things that US University administrations do, we do here through the department - including the entire admissions process. Next week begins the 'marking' period, where ALL of the assesment materials will have to be read by the department as a whole, with 2 markers assigned for every piece of work. Each of us gets a number assigned for the centralized distribution of marking. Mine is 300 and some change, and I've no real idea what that means. I do know that there are 3 to 4 weeks of the year where the entire department is marking full time.

Also, keep in mind that a 68 would be an outstanding mark, a 50 is not too bad, and anything above about a 76 is unheard of.