Foreign Perspectives

Whereas with the astronomy the other year many of the experiments were optional, in the biology course the two experiments need to be written up as part of two seperate assignments.

Thus, a week is alloted to each one. Or, rather since this is S204, they are crammed in on top of everything else. The summer period is particularly bad for this course with three major asignments due over around four weeks, plus the one for the related summer school. Hence, of course, just about everyone is faling behind with the course and a number are dropping out, even at this late date.

I’m nearly a week late with the experiment courtesy in part of a last minute hitch which has hit several other people too. If there had been time to do some prior research it would have been obvious that varying the pH wasn’t going to be viable but time is something that is just not available on this course, thus another delay is added at the worst time.

The final assignment is pretty much a mini exam in format. Well, I say mini but I’m sure that it will take rather longer than the three hours of the exam itself, having glanced at it yesterday. Typically for this course, there seems to have been no thought put into considering the workload of the students at this point.

Revision for the exam needs to start soon too as even the basic notes that I have run to over 80 pages now.