Orientations are in an hour and fifteen minutes, and I still have to finalise my syllabus (semesterplan). Oh, it’s fine, it has been for weeks, but I’d like it to be prettier, and more informative, and better, and nicely laid out and all that. Given I only have an hour left it likely won’t be.
However, orientations should be more fun than usual. Rather than do a boring row of presentations of all our courses, we’re just briefly introducing everyone who teaches at the department, emphasising our research interests as well as what we’re teaching (particularly important for students who’ll be finding advisors for their own research), we’ll put out the syllabi on a table and serve food and drinks – hopefully the food and drinks and informality will help students get to know each other and make it easy for them to ask teachers questions about the courses they’d like to take.
OK. Time to finish that syllabus and help Unn-Therese set up the tables and food and such.
Erik
i agree with you, the info meeting was out of the ordinary. It wan not boring, mostly cause you where standing. The problem with info meetings in position sitting is: tired, early in the morning, no coffe, get sleepy. Anyway, it was a good idea. I likes the way of doing it. Maybe it was because i was hungry, but you need both mental food and physicaly food to progress. I didnt get to know any of the lower grade students, but i got to know the masterstudent more than i used to. And i even found a space at the reading space, and went home 2 hours later than planed…….They say social integration is important! i concure.
By the way, there is some error with your size of post writing window. it gets inside the pink part of your site, so that you dont see what you write.
Jill
Oh, I’m glad you enjoyed it, Erik – and thanks for helping tidy up! Having a good social environment is really important, I think, for being happy and getting work done. I know from experience that it’s much more fun and satisfying to work on something when your friends are working on similar stuff. It would be very hard to complete an MA thesis alone…