The joyous first week begins

Things are back to usual here at Rhosgobel, as classes have started again; I just met my lecture students for the first time today. I was asked many spontaneous questions during the lecture; all of them were relevant to the topic at hand, and some were quite advanced. I couldn't have asked for a better first lecture.

It's been an interesting past few months; back in October our spring schedule was cut by a large fraction for budgetary reasons, but in the past few weeks the administration has realized that enrollment is now way down (gee, never would have expected that ...), and thus the administration has been frantically asking us to add lab sections. Adding labs at the last minute is an administrative disaster, as we have to find adjuncts to teach the labs, arrange for lab techs to support the labs, order supplies to teach the labs, and find timeslots to fit the labs in (oh yes, and notify the students that the new lab exists). My department has pulled through amazingly and added four new labs, two of them just in the past week. I'm so proud!

Other administrative headaches are also piling up and distracting me from teaching. Probably the largest is that the administration already wants both next summer's and next fall's schedules drafted out within the next few weeks. The fun never ends!