The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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9:10am on Wednesday, 6th July, 2022:
Anecdote
I went to the university yesterday to give my first in-person talk since the start of the pandemic. The occasion was a "taster day", an even in which coachloads of schoolkids from our primary catchment area come along to listen to sample lectures from different disciplines.
No-one had volunteered to give the Computer Science talk, and after much pleading from the organisers I decided I'd nobly step up and do it. It was scheduled for LTB 3 at 1pm — the first lecture after lunch, so maybe more like 1:10pm in practice.
I was waiting outside LTB 3 and spotted one of my colleagues who had graciously volunteered to do the sample Electronic Engineering lecture. He was looking at the big screen. He had been due to talk in LTB 6 (which is the biggest room in the lecture theatre block) but an email earlier in the day had moved him to LTB 4. The big screen was saying that LTB 4 was bookable at 1pm, which it shouldn't have been if he was talking there.
Come 1pm there was no-one in LTB 4 so he went off to find out what had happened. I waited in LTB 3 for the audience to roll up.
At 5 past 1, one of the organiser's assistants appeared. She apologised profusely for wasting my time, but every schoolkid had signed up for the taster lecture for Sports Science. I didn't have to deliver my lecture.
I have to say, although I wasn't pleased to have gone onto campus to deliver a lecture that wasn't needed, I nevertheless was pleased that I didn't have to deliver it. I could go home early, and the next time someone desperately asked for a volunteer I could legitimately say that I volunteered that last time. I told the assistant this, but she seemed to think I was being sarcastic and continued to apologise.
I'm sure that some of the students who went to the Sports Science taster lecture will nevertheless end up studying Computer Science at Essex University. They've already got that whole not-showing-up-for-lectures concept down perfectly.
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