Time management

“I am definitely going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.”

Louis E. Boone

As I start a new term (my fourth) in a new academic year with a new group of eager(?) young (mostly) students I am made aware that the honeymoon period for this particular post-secondary lecturer is over…

…in timetable terms at least!

If I am more honest I should really admit that – as a term-contracted semi-retired part-timer – I am rightly considered the lowest of the low when it comes to the allocation of teaching slots.

I teach one course – two days a week. On each of those days I lecture for sixty or ninety minutes and run a lab session for ninety minutes. I am also obliged to spend a couple of hours a week in my (shared) office so as to be readily available to students. The rest I can do from home. Until now I have been fortunate with regard to timetabling. None of my starts has been early and on each of my teaching days the lab sessions have followed hard on the heels of the classroom lectures.

Not so this term. I teach on Mondays and Wednesdays – at 8:30 am!

Now – I really can’t pretend that the early start is an issue. It takes me about half an hour to get to the college – even in the morning ‘rush’ – and let’s face it, compared to to my pre-retirement commute this is a complete doddle.

My issue is that on both of my teaching days the lab sessions are scheduled in the mid-afternoon – at 2:00 pm and 3:30 pm respectively. This means a gap of four and six hours on those days during which I am somewhat stuck. A couple of hours are used up as office time and of course I do have preparation and marking, but I find both of those easier to do in the comfort of my studio at home.

If I lived close to the college I would simply go home in between lectures and labs. Indeed, that is what I will doubtless be doing for the longer of the gaps on Wednesdays – but that does mean wasting another hour a week in the car and the Lexus (which I love to bits) is not the most frugal of beasts…

I simply have to remind myself that this is very much a first-world problem and to get on with it. It is, after all, only for fourteen weeks… well – twelve now!

As you were…