Got cornered by one of my colleagues this morning on the way to coffee, since he’s busy allocating next year’s teaching load. This place treats new lecturers extremely kindly, and only makes us do 33% of the normal teaching load in our first year. Once you’ve figured in the load for tutees, project students and the PCAP course, you’re down to around a third of a compulsory first or second year module. To cut a long story short, I’m going to be teaching half of Database Systems to the second years in the autumn, which is ded gud, or at least better than the alternatives (Compiler Design, which I’ve largely forgotten, Professional Issues or Communications and Networks). I stand a good chance of being able to hang onto the course in subsequent years, which is also good (normal load is one first or second year course, and one more advanced third or fourth year course).