This is just a list of assignments I currently have pending to be handed in at university:

My Top Ten Pressing Deadlines

1. My formal lab report
2. A quantum mechanics/Maple assignment
3. A ‘physics in review’ assignment
4. A maths worksheet
5. Two C write ups
6. An oral presentation for lab
7. Paper Chase for lab
8. My lab book needs some work
9. Revision for the test every Wednesday
10. A thermodynamics assignment

Needless to say, this is not possible. Adam had to go and shout at the lab convenor until he gave the entire year group a three to four day extention on the lab report deadline. This was entirely justifyed. The lab report has to be done on an experiment performed before the deadline (obviously), and we have done precicely four experiments so far this year. One of them was “Mechanical Workshop”, which doesn’t count and you can’t do a report on it. If you’ve done the Astrophysics experiment, you can’t do that one either, and if you got bad results another time, you only have a choice of one. And you can’t do that one, because the cretin lab demonstrators have got your lab book because they can’t be bothered to mark it until the morning you need it again for lab! And he said he’d have it done days ago. I won’t go into what I think of his marking system here.

The lab convenor even had the nerve to suggest that had Adam started his report sooner he wouldn’t be in this mess. Adam calmly (I hope calmly; I wasn’t there) pointed out that that wasn’t possible, because of all the other work he had to do, and the fact that mechanical workshop had meant that he only finished the experiment he was reporting on the previous week.

While we’re on the subject of Mech Shop, the people in there this week already have all their experiments they can do the report on completed and marked. They also have their lab books. Why then, have they got an extra week to hand their reports in? What possible sense does that make?

When we went in to lab this morning, we noticed the deadline for reports had indeed been officially moved. Then they handed out something called the “Paper Chase”. This is, apparently, a search for pointless information to test our research skills. The first step in the Paper Chase reads as follows:

“Step 1 : If you are a Physics with Astrophysics student, this is the wrong script for you - obtain the correct one from the laboratory !”

Good start.

The maths worksheets have proved interesting lately. Our maths lecturer, having failed to turn up for our last lecture because he can’t tell the time, granted us a three day extention on the worksheet. This was on top of the eleven day extention he granted us last week. Then he, for some reason, put up an overhead sheet with answers to the next-but-one sheet, which we copied down. After that I asked for the second page of said answers. To my astonishment, they put that up as well.

That was an hour or two before the weekly test. It’s not really a test per se, more a sort of ‘farce’. There are three groups. The first has Dr. Adolf. He’s a nice guy, but a strict invigilator (ie. he invigilates properly). Our group has Dr. Brereton, who is genuinely no better at invigilating than a trained chimp. He sits and reads a book. He doesn’t look up at all. This is why Dick Steele can get away with writing all the equations on the whiteboard at the front of the room and referring to them throughout the exam.

I never do the Physics in Review prep questions (which, you may notice didn’t even make the top ten). To date, none of the lecturers have been stupid enough to ask me why not.