I missed a week! But I've not given up, so here we are again.
A routine continues to settle around me:
- Monday: A focus on my day job during the day, and in the evening on ensuring I have done at least some preparation for ...
- Tuesday: Transition Engineering tutorial, which is just an hour out of my day job, dedicated to discussion of the current week's TE lectures, and of the several outstanding tasks and assignments. One current task is heavily based on using Excel spreadsheets to display and analyse energy statistics between 1965 and now. I have met my nemesis, having spent an entire career successfully avoiding significant use of Excel!
- Wednesday: A short burst of working early, and on the move (I can get a remarkable amount done during the 30 minutes or on the bus to or from Stromness, it turns out) before a 2-hour Transition Engineering lecture slot from 9-11am. The first few weeks are all based on the course text book, Transition Engineering: Building a Sustainable Future, it is a deceptively easy read, but contains huge questions and challenges to how we think about what the problems of sustainability really are. From 11am onwards, it's back to the day job - using the WiFi and space variously of the ICIT library, the OIC hot-desk facility at the Warehoose Building, the X1 bus, my home office or my desk within the IT building in King St. Kirkwall.
- Thursday: A whole, uninterrupted morning of work; Thursday morning is when my team at work plan the work for the week ahead - an essential part, for me, of making sure I make appropriate progress. Lunchtime sees a 3-hour lecture slot on the Economics of Renewable Energy from 1pm-4pm. So far, this has been a crash-course in the basics of classical economics (with a few challenges and alternative ways of thinking thrown in). It should be very dry and a bit boring, but it is actually quite stimulating and thought-provoking. A bit more work for the day job, before catching the 5pm bus home (annoyingly, from the Swimming Pool in Stromness, not the much closer Travel Centre). Thursday evenings lately have been dedicated to reviewing the 2022 Orkney International Science Festival, with the team - but from the coming week onwards, it should be free for a bit of MSc study, when necessary.
- Friday: Focus once again on my day job, ensuring that wherever possible, all tasks started during the week are finished, or can be finished on Monday. The arrival of the weekend is usually celebrated with a fish supper from the Willows Chip Shop (aka the Willows Takeaway), and some mindless TV (currently working our way through season 2 of the excellent, but very silly, The Great).
- Saturday and Sunday: At least 2 concentrated 2-hour study sessions to prepare for next week's MSc lectures, and another couple of 2 hour sessions to work on assignments and other tasks. If I can achieve that amount of work over the weekend, then I should only have to devote an hour or 2 during weekday evenings to study (at least until there is exam or dissertation panic, later in the course).
At least for the first few weeks of the first semester, this is theoretically (and, so far, actually) practicable. However, there are a couple of group assignments coming up, including a concentrated week of working with all the Orkney- and Edinburgh- based students during the week beginning 10 October, which will lead to a need to reduce my working hours, at least at times, due to the amount of 9-5 MSc work which will be required. I am very fortunate that my management is entirely open to my working very flexibly, "within the exigencies of the service", as the saying goes, so I still don't anticipate any great problem in that area.
Week 4 begins tomorrow - let's see what that brings!
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