Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

I told my thesis student that I would be in the department only in the morning on Thursday. Again he had perfect timing because he arrived at 3pm, a few minutes before I was supposed to leave. All for giving three one-page letters to his panelists that asks them if they are free for scheduling an oral defense on any of the dates listed.
He does say that he talked to one of the panelists already, and that she’s not available for Thursday or Friday next week. Since Wednesday is our Faculty General Assembly, that’s off. So he plans to make it on Tuesday. He also plans to give me his paper on Saturday morning for revision.

I also told him of the possibility of defending at the start of the first term of the new school year. He said he didn’t want that because he’ll have to pay tuition again. I told him not when the subject is deferred. He does not have to enroll in the subject again. But it turns out that he’s talking about something else, a so-called residency fee that they impose on students who only have deferred subjects to work on and do not have any more subjects enrolled, either because they have completed everything else in their coursework (which is usually the case) or because of unavailability of subjects (a rare occurrence, but it still happens).

If he pays the residency fee, it probably includes updating his enrollment status so that the ID scanners will not mark him has unenrolled despite having no load this term as well as insurance in case something happens to him in the school, especially the labs.

At least he remembered that the letters are supposed to be noted by me. I sign all the copies and instructed the secretary not to leave it on the panelists’ desks but to give it to them as they arrive, or tell them about it when they call the department. Of course the only hitch to that plan is if the panelists show up when the secretary is not here, either when she is on her break, out on an errand or after office hours.

At least if the letters of scheduling are on her desk I am assuming it will be fresh in her mind. I also have the belief that if she puts them on their desks she would have forgotten all about them if they call up, something like out of sight, out of mind. I know I’ve done that with several messages for some of my co-teachers.

The alternative of course is to give contact information of the panelists to the student himself, and let him schedule the defense with them himself, as well as coordinate with my availability. I could do that, but I’ll have to ask the teachers first if it’s okay to give their contact numbers to the student. Maybe he can even send his paper to their homes.