[botherer] never mind. get involved in sunday league football, that'll help redress the balance.
[rab] I'm second year, and I think I'm at the stage you describe your physics students as being at. I *like* my subject, it interests me (finally), but I wouldn't stay on campus all day working on it because I like it. although I am today, but that's because I'm grossly disorganised. oh well, wish me luck.
[rab] That's odd. When I was a student I hated discontinuous assesment (to the extent of picking my courses to avoid exams), but doing education work has led me to like it less, because it normally means continuous alertness to student needs (and a more constant flow of paperwork), which is harder than sitting back and regurgitating a load of stuff at students the same each year.
[nights] Well, assessed coursework is still assessment, I should think. In any case, personally I don't mind exams, although perhaps that's because I'm all right at them (my BA was 100% exams, and all the exams took place within a single fortnight at the end). I'm not convinced by the argument that assessment is an ineffecient use of time because it could be better used teaching students things: I'd say that reinforcing stuff you've already been taught and ensuring that you actually know it properly rather than have just a vague memory of it - in other words, revising - is just as valuable as learning it the first time around, if not more so.
Best way to maximise the amount you can recall of what you have been taught is to review it after a day, a week, a month, a year, noting errors in your recall at each stage and concentrating on correcting them. I can vouch for the fact that it works, it's just that I for one was always far too lazy to do it properly.