Last summer, I moved from the US to the UK. This summer, somehow I scheduled three separate trips from the US to the UK. Here’s the story.
Continue readingSummer Travel
1 Reply
Tag Archives: life
Time use: King’s College vs Whitman
It’s been several weeks since I promised a blog post on time use. Somehow I overcommitted myself with scholarly projects and travel – in fact, I drafted this post at 8 pm British Summer Time, in an airplane over the Hudson Bay. But that is a story for another time.
Inspired by a conversation at the Liberal Arts CS (LACS) Consortium annual meeting last month, I decided to look at my time use during my first 6 months at King’s College, Cambridge. That led naturally to a comparison with my last 6 months at Whitman before leaving on sabbatical.
I’ll start with Whitman, where my time allocations are probably more familiar to US colleagues. Then I’ll explain what’s different at King’s.
Continue readingMy first term at King’s College, Cambridge
At the University of Cambridge, the academic year has three eight-week terms. I’m now celebrating a successful conclusion to my first term at Cambridge – a good time to look back and reflect.
A term goes by really fast, but it’s a bit more than eight weeks in practice. In fact, the Cambridge academic calendar is quite confusing! Lectures don’t start at the beginning of term, but rather a week or two later. “Full Term” begins two days before the start of lectures and ends two days after. Students and Fellows must be in residence in Cambridge during the entirety of Full Term, with few exceptions. The days at the beginning of Full Term are time for academic advising and settling in before lectures start. The days at the end are not for exams, as they would be at most US institutions. Instead, they allow for supervision and academic advising meetings after the last lectures are over.
My previous post was published Monday, January 19, the day before the first day of Full Term. As I write today, it’s Thursday, March 26, the day after the last day of Lent Term.
Although there are precisely eight weeks of lectures, the first lectures are on a Thursday and the last are on a Wednesday. Since my workweek is Monday through Friday, I’ll number my weeks as such below – starting, of course, from 0.
Continue reading
