While on sabbatical in Ireland last fall, I wrote a series of "Musings" about the experience. I thought "Infinity" readers might find this one interesting.  The most noteworthy thing my family and I encountered in academics was the means of scheduling classes. To illustrate, let me share with you my experience lecturing a course that met twice a week. Now, here I was trying to cover the same material I would cover in a similar course at Wooster (where it meets four times a week) and to make matters worse, the Irish term didn't start until Oct. 6! Irish students must be willing to do a lot more work out of class... ...NOT. Ever hear 30 people with an Irish accent all whine in unison?

So, here's the schedule I get: Thursday, 2:00 in ABL132 and Friday, 12:00 in AL1.  This shows the first interesting thing about class scheduling in Ireland. No two meetings for the same course ever meet in the same room or the same time of day. In fact, you are more likely to have two class meetings on the same day than two at the same hour on different days. My son Brian had the same experience in his school. His schedule was completely different every day. He was in 10 different classes, some meeting 4 times a week, some 3, some 2, some once. No course ever met the same time on two different days. It was quite confusing.

Anyway, back to my schedule. First I must find out what ABL132 and AL1 mean. ABL was a bit tough. After asking several people, I discovered it was the new building going up on campus. Sounded promising. If the building had been finished, it would have been fine, but as I walked in I noticed all these men in dusty jeans and T-shirts wearing hard-hats and wielding loud, dangerous tools. I ran through the unfinished parts with my ears covered and a book over my head to find my room. About 50 desk/chairs were crammed into a room suited for about 15. Medium board space, a little chalk. I should say lots of little chalk. About fingernail size. My first class meeting went relatively well except that no one showed until 2:05 and most not until 2:15. I've since learned that by Irish standards, the 2:05 group was quite early.

Locating AL1 was easy. It was in the math department building and a room made for mathematics instruction - lots of board space and lots of chalk. Unfortunately I never got to set foot in there. By Thursday afternoon my class meeting times and places were changed. Apparently one of the old timers in the department liked my schedule better than his. My new schedule was Monday, 5:00 Pres S5 and Friday, 4:00 W6. Talk about low man on the totem pole. Now the W in W6 means the west wing of THE building in the center of campus. It is a huge, beautiful, old u-shaped building surrounding the "quad". The room was adequate, no chalk but cool to get a room in this building. Pres S5 was the worst yet. The room had only one blackboard panel and was a 15-minute walk from my office. The "Pres" stands for Presentation Brothers, an order of monks that used to own the building. It looks like St. Patrick may have built it himself, though I doubt he would have painted it the bright pink it is today. Not a cool building.

The shuffling was not over yet, though. By Tuesday of the second week, things shifted again. Friday, 4:00 W6 was changed to Friday, 1:00 Pres S2. Well, at least the time slot was an improvement and S2 had loads of chalk. (The chalk, laid side by side, would fill more area than the blackboard space!) So now my finalized schedule has classes meeting Monday and Friday (so much for sneaking out for a long weekend!) and both meetings in the worst and farthest building on campus.

I really feel for the poor students in all this. There is no system of communication here and it is left to word of mouth for such changes to get around. They all seemed to find out by the end of the third week, though I'm not sure since I never received a class list, so I still don't know who was supposed to be in the class. Overall the teaching went well. My students thought I was a bit strange sometimes, but my students at Wooster think that too.  Just to keep you straight, two classes a week is not all I did over there that can be called "work." The sabbatical was for study and research.

Teaching one course happens to be connected to my research on Calculus instruction in Ireland as compared to in the U.S. I also took a computer programming course and read through two textbooks in the field of management science models. It was a very successful semester and a wonderful time in Ireland for my family and myself.