Sunday 15 September 2013

Busy times

What a week!

Most of my time was spent lecturing to 17 students on the Principles of Winemaking course at Plumpton College. They were a great bunch, really enthusiastic and keen to find out as much about wine in a short amount of time.  As usual there was a real mix; permutations of women, men, all ages, British, Australians, Turkish, American, Taiwanese, Danish, career changers, newly retired,  business people, consultants, a microbiologist, a chemist, MW students and grape growers.  
Principles of winemaking students


In the week that I have with them I have 20 hours of lecturers to talk through the key concepts of winemaking, which is a tough ask.  Further more I don't want to give a simple recipe to follow, but instead want to give them some tools with which they can use to approach winemaking and allow them to make their own decisions.  Its a tough process and the students need to be engaged to be able to assimilate the knowledge.  Luckily they are very keen and up for the challenge.  After I have them for lectures they are then sent to winery to do more practical activities with our practical wine making instructor Peter Morgan.  This helps cement all the theory  they have covered.
Cleaning the crusher after the afternoon processing


When not teaching, I was getting ready for the return of our undergraduate students.  Re-enrolments start this week so its always a busy time.  There are new students to meet and  prepare for teaching as wall as our returning second years to welcome back.  Though in this case the welcome back is an intensive 2 day course on Winery safety, so that they can work in the College winery and labs without endangering themselves and others.  

But lets not stop there, I also have a second group of Principles of Winemaking students in for two days, a new piece of lab equipment (new Randox Monaco analyser) to install and plenty of the usual paperwork to complete.  Can't see myself working much on PhD this week, but lets see what happens.  Time to log off and plan some teaching and assessments.  

   

   

1 comment:

  1. What a great week I had with you and Peter. I am very grateful, having learned so much and having so much fun at the same time.

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