My chosen modules for this year have continued to be as interesting as they seemed at the start of the year and I am getting on well with them. Some of the lecturers however are not as good.

The assignment for one of the modules I am doing was given out at the start of term together with a list of suggested research areas. Basically we had to pick an area, research it and write a 3000 word report. Now this was quite a good piece of work as:

A> It is nice not to have to worry about coding or designing anything for a change, we can just write.

B> Some of the suggested topics on offer were very interesting.

I picked my area almost instantly (Cyberstalking – which was on the list he gave out and I was not the only one to pick it) and being the hard working student I was hoping to be pretty much made a start on the research straight away.

Roll on 3 weeks and the lecturer decides he is going to give us some presentations of what he is expecting, what sort of research he is looking for and what he expects from the final report. Fair enough, we all like a bit of guidance now and then. The presentation that he did he based on if you were doing Cyberstalking (woohoo I thought, insider info). Anyway, we get to the end of his presentation and he says casually that of course now that he has presented Cyberstalking and given tips on it it would be unfair on those not doing that area so therefore it was not recommended that anyone do this topic for their area.At first I laughed as I  thought he was joking, but he wasn’t.

I was fuming, as was another friend of mine who was doing the same area and had done a lot of work already as I had. I asked why it had been a suggested topic on the list if, 3 weeks down the road, he was going to say we shouldn’t do it. His answer to this was that those topics were merely suggestions but if we felt strongly about it we could continue to do it but were not to use any of the research (this included his list of 30 plus references) to do our work and if we did, we would not get marks for those parts as “he was not going to give marks for research that he had done”. This fact pretty much ruined any chance of doing the area and getting a good mark as he had referenced a lot of the books, journals and websites that I had been looking at. So after I had calmed down I set about thinking of a new area to research. I picked a new topic (Identity theft) and emailed his the same day asking if this was OK. He replied saying it was so I set about researching this area almost immediately to get up to date as I was now 3 weeks behind.

Coincidently, the next week during a lecture for another module we were given out another piece of coursework. Which was on… you guessed it, Identity Theft. Bingo, I thought… two birds, one stone.

Now we fast forward to the end of last week where we get an email from the lecturer of the first module to confirm what areas we are all doing. I send of my email and think nothing else of it until Wednesday when I check my email just before going into uni. What do I see but an email from him saying that too many people have chosen Identity Theft (he realises this is probably because a lot of people have chosen to do it as it would be similar to the other modules coursework). He was not happy with the fact so many people were doing the same topic as it would be “boring for him to have to mark” and he wanted everyone that had chosen ID Theft to “reconsider their topics”… erm… Excuse me??????

Now, those of you that know me, I am not the sort of person that gets angry easily and I hate confrontation but I flipped. I went into uni but could not track down the lecturer in question. I did however literally bump into my course leader who apparently could tell from the moment he saw me that something was up. I explained it all and he agreed that it was not on that this lecturer could make me change topics AGAIN with only 4 week left until hand in date after he had OK’ed it previously. He was also not happy that we were told to change from Cyberstalking after it has been a suggested topic.

He told me to leave it with him and to come find him before I go home. So a few hours later after my lectures I go back.He had spoken to the lecturer in question who has agreed to ‘allow’ me to carry on with my chosen topic. He also assured me that I should not worry about not being marked fairly as there are always 2nd markers for final year assignments.

I have also been offered an extension over Christmas to make up for the 3 weeks at the start of term that I lost. I told them that I would use it if need be but I was really hoping to be done before Christmas. My dissertation is enough to be going on with over Christmas let alone having other coursework to finish.

So. apart from some lecturers being incompetant (don’t even get me started on the one that can’t even give out hand outs without messing something up) this term is generally turning out to be quite interesting. I am keeping up with the work load reasonably well, even though I am having off days – I have done no work at all today for example but everyone needs a day to themselves occasionally.

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