Back to work

Today I am back to work after a long summer break - memories of Route 66 and beaches in Wexford seem so far away while going through hundreds of emails that arrived in my Inbox over the summer. I always make a point of not checking work email while I am on annual leave. The main reason is that I believe that everyone should take a break from the work email - I often think of this as the longest dog leash in the world. Also - since I am not teaching during the summer, not much happens for me during this time anyway. Despite hundreds of emails - I have got through them all, only a few dozen need a response as most are subscription and automated mail.

End of Route 66 with a new academic year to look forward to.

I will be teaching the same modules as last year, so there will be a lot less workload in preparing for classes in September. This time last year I took on an R Programming module and had to prepare a complete new set of module resources - this involved a lot of work. Thankfully I can reap the benefits of doing this next semester (it was also my first ever online module). There will be some updates, but these can be handled on a weekly basis. 

I am looking forward to the new academic year - I will not have too many left as I see retirement on the horizon. My subjects are Statistics, R, and Project Management - nice modules to work with. There is a great buzz in meeting new students each year, lots of new people to get to know. I also look forward to meeting students from countries that I have not had students from before. Last year I had a students from Uruguay and Paraguay for the first time - diverse classes make for a great learning and teaching experience. 

Back to work!