Tuesday, February 2

I woke up early with my mind racing with things I should do or say today. I made notes of the ones that seemed realistic and then got up.

It had indeed snowed overnight but nowhere near as much as the weather forecast had promised. The ground was covered with a uniform blanket of snow but it had stopped falling and it was not very deep.

I spent the morning leading the first session of the Structuring Information course, which is also the first time that I have taught the first year. This is not quite true. Tomas and I had them as part of the Innovations course which was for the entire first year. This is the first time I have taught them as a group, and the first time I have taught them anything directly related to online media.

I explained xml and they did some introductory exercises and then we stopped. I had a quick lunch and prepared for the far more daunting first proper session of the Games Theory & Design course, where they will be learning by teaching, and attempting this by building a course to teach them what they would need to know to pass this course.

At 13:15 I was there and prepared. Everything was organised, I had slides to show them to remind them of the tasks, and all their preliminary work commented. At 13:30 they were all fifteen minutes late and I began to suspect that something was up. I went to my room to check the online calendar and there they were: booked for 13:15 in A303. I walked back and there they weren’t. I went to the staffroom and asked Monica to check. It was missing from the students’ calendars but booked into mine. WE went through the details, and the booking had all the correct information.

Now I am coming back from trying to find Krister, who runs the booking system. He is at a meeting which presumably got entered into his calendar correctly. I am looking at this big bunch of flowers and ferns that has appeared recently. I am not sure when it appeared but I do know that it hasn’t always been there.

I am reminded that two weeks ago the students turned up after I had changed the date of a class. This also appeared correctly everywhere except their calendars. I wonder how many times we will actually meet in this course.

I will go back and continue writing grant applications and conference papers. Conveniently, as Nathalie pointed out, these are almost the same thing; and so every sentence I write has at least two destinations.

Not for long will I write, for I will soon find myself teaching a random group of students, including some who should have been here anyway. They have random problems and my head will be stretched so much that I will abandon all notions of brain-training today.

I will notice it is gently snowing and when I leave the ground will be covered again.