In the Dark<p><strong>The Week Ahead</strong></p><p>Another weekend is almost over so, after spending most of this afternoon in the garden, I’ve retreated indoors to look at my calendar for the forthcoming week. I find a plethora of Examination Board meetings, one (tomorrow) for our Masters students who <a href="https://telescoper.blog/2025/08/15/presentation-day/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">did their presentations on Friday</a> and two for undergraduates who took repeat examinations in August (one for Mathematical Physics and one for Engineering, as I happen to have been teaching Engineering Mathematics this year). The two undergraduate boards are both on Thursday. All three of these should be relatively brief, but you never know…</p><p>There is another meeting tomorrow, Monday, about organizing our computational physics teaching for the new academic year. The merger of theoretical and experimental physics has given us the chance to coordinate the different computational modules offered by the two previous departments, but we need to make sure the teaching rooms are big enough and the computers have the correct software, etc. Fortunately I’m not actually teaching Computational Physics again until Semester 2 but we have to get it sorted in time for other modules happening in Semester 1.</p><p>In between Monday and Thursday I have two whole days with no meetings and no grading to do. I might be able to get on with some research, or at least with writing up some research I’ve already done. </p><p>Friday is a big day for the Irish higher education system, in that it’s the day students get their Leaving Certificate results. This year the grade inflation introduced during the pandemic is supposed to begin to unwind, but none of us outside the examination system knows how this will be achieved or what the results will be. If I had to bet I’d say that the CAO points needed for most courses at Maynooth will go down substantially, partly because of the deflation mentioned previously but also because The Management has decided that the University has to recruit more and more students and will drop entry standards as low as it needs to in order to meet its targets. </p><p>I don’t know how many students we will end up with for Academic Year 2025/6 but I do know that I will have retired before most of them complete their course. I used to find it a bit scary thinking about retirement, but not any more.</p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/computational-physcs/" target="_blank">#ComputationalPhyscs</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/leaving-certificate/" target="_blank">#LeavingCertificate</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/maynooth-university/" target="_blank">#MaynoothUniversity</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/physics/" target="_blank">#Physics</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/postgraduate/" target="_blank">#postgraduate</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/undergraduate/" target="_blank">#undergraduate</a></p>