So, it is party time again, folks!

[wiseheart]

Each year this time, we launch my virtual birthday party, which starts on October 1 and ends on October 9 at midnight, sharp. The goals of the party are to post as many comments and collapse as many threads as possible, on as many new pages as we can. It is always great fun, as you can see if you check out the similar entries of the last few years.

This year, I'll also throw the real party at mid-time - and post the recipes of all the food that will be there for you, so that you can all participate if you want to. Virtual food has no calories.

Fandom-related discussions are as welcome as the ones about coffee or chocolate (just to name a few favourites from previous years), and, of course, pictures and recipes of birthday cakes. ;)

So, drop by, tell your story, post your pics or silly poems, ask questions you always wanted to ask and have a good time!

Soledad, in excited expectation




Oh, and by the way, to provide birthday gifts hobbit-style, I've got a revived story and a Kansas 2 update for you.

Enjoy!

Comments

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Solid State Physics, specifically magnetism, to our level three students. It does help that magnetic materials is what I have been doing research in for the last decade and a half, so the material at least is quite familiar to me. On the other hand, sometimes there is such a thing as being too familiar with a subject, so that you have forgotten that some of the more fundamental bits aren't actually obvious to the students...

We used to have 8am lectures when I was a student; I really pity the poor lecturer who had to give them! My students are a nice bunch, and a good number of them were actually already in the lecture theatre at quarter to nine -- on Friday morning! That meant I got to have a bit of a chat with them, and some of them asked me some questions, which is always a nice feeling, when you can answer them...

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

It's good to teach something that feels well within your comfort zone, even if sometimes it's hard to think down to the level of the students. What are level three students?

We never had 8am lectures, but I did have some 8am supervisions, which was a pain because I also had several 7pm ones... Beng in organised classes from 8am till 8pm with only a brief break for lunch and dinner was not my idea of heaven! 9am lectures on Saturday were also a pain. I'm not sure when one was expected to get essays done.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

'Level 3 students' is what Queen's University Belfast calls what most other universities call 'third year students'; technically though the terms are not entirely synonymous, because our students are allowed to take one 'level 3' course in their fourth year...

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I keep forgetting that lots of university courses are now four years. I never took any physics beyond school level, though my first year maths courses assumed one was taking physics, which was painful.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

My undergraduate engineering degree was actually four-and-a-half years, which has been the standard for engineering degrees in Sweden for decades. Pretty much all science degrees are four year courses in Sweden, so I find the three-year degree courses here in the UK very short. It does seem we are moving towards the four-year degree being the standard here, too. There has been talk of making the Physics BSc at Queen's an exit degree only, so that we don't admit students to the three-year programme, but can allow them to exit with some degree after three years if they aren't getting the grades we require for them to be allowed to progress to the fourth year.

What did you do your degree in? The officially translation of my degree title is Master of Science in Materials Engineering, though I would generally express it the other way around as an engineering degree in Materials Science.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

when I was at university, engineering degrees usually took four years but most other sciences were only three.

Officially I have a Master of Arts in Natural Sciences but in practice I switched over the years (owing to an allergy to maths) from studying chemistry & biochemistry to graduating in pathology, mainly studying virology & cancer.

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

Only three years for university? How interesting. Four years or the equivalent stretched out over more time if attending part-time has been the standard in the US for a long time.

However, change is a-comin' to US post-secondary education. As tuition climbs ever higher and graduates leave with more and more student loan debt (me included: paid off the last of my college loans in my 30s, but I'll be paying off the loans for my master's thesis project until I'm 71), questions about both the costs and the value of what they're getting for that money have reached the level of public discussion in popular media. I think uni in the US will look quite different within the next decade.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

The thing that really shocked me about the UK university system was that a Ph.D. is also only three years; in Sweden it is a four year full time degree, and the university can ask you (if they pay you for that separately) to undertake up to 20% 'departmental duties'. These can include things like being lab demonstrator (in science/engineering) and holding tutorials/seminars. If you undertake these extra duties, that means added on extra time for you to finish your Ph.D. so that most Swedish Ph.D.s take closer to five years, than four. With an experimental based research subject, most of your worthwhile results usually come in the last year, to year-and-a-half, because it takes time to learn the techniques, get the samples and make some mistakes along the way. This is an education after all, and mistakes are one of the best learning tools, so I think factoring in time for those is essential. With a three year Ph.D. there isn't really time for trying things that didn't work out, so I think students in the UK system either really miss out, or end up incredibly stress at the end of their Ph.D.s.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I think it might work better in some subjects than others -- with the molecular pathology I read in my final year, we were expected to be completely conversant with current published research -- including stuff published after we'd been lectured on the topic -- so it's not clear how much more advanced it was possible to get without undertaking a more-prolonged or self-directed research project.

But in long-established subjects such as mathematics, a fourth year diploma was required as a prerequisite to starting a PhD, at least in my university, and I don't think even after the diploma students were up to speed on current research even across the topics they'd specialised in.