The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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1:56pm on Tuesday, 16th February, 2016:
Anecdote
I had to reschedule this afternoon's 4pm-6pm CE317 lecture so I could attend a 2pm-5pm examination board meeting. I'd known for weeks that this would be necessary, so about 3 weeks ago I asked for the lecture to be rescheduled.
Nothing happened for 2 weeks, so I asked again. This time, something did happen: I was asked if the Head of Department was aware of it.
OK, so this hasn't happened before. Normally, we can reschedule lectures on our own initiative. Furthermore, about the one thing that you're guaranteed to be able to miss any university event for is when you're doing external examination work at another university. It has a greater excuse value than your own death. Anyway, I made the Head of Department aware and he duly approved (although the way the requirement was worded, he merely needed to be aware - his actual approval wasn't required). This meant that the lecture rescheduling could go ahead.
Yesterday, Monday 15th, at 9am, an email was sent out from the school office telling my CE317 students that the lecture was being rescheduled to Monday 15th at 9am ("today"). I didn't even see the email myself until 9:25, after I came out from a meeting. I doubt most of my students had seen it by 9am today, let alone yesterday.
Confusingly, the email gave the date as being in November, not February, so even those who received the email the moment it was sent and were able to teleport themselves instantaneously to any teaching room in the university would have been stumped by the time travel requirement (or, if it meant November 2016, by the fact that they would have picked up their degree certificate 4 months earlier).
I've asked for the lecture to be rerescheduled. It'll probably be 9am next Monday instead, which is pretty well the same as being 3am as far as most students are concerned (ie. the day doesn't start for another 4 hours).
Staff shortages in the school office caused by illness appear to be to blame.
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Copyright © 2016 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).