Ever since the final exams on Friday, 25 July 2025, I was only able to begin marking on the following Sunday, since on Saturday, I was in a wedding (as mentioned in the last post). As usual, the initial marking began quite slowly as one is getting used with the way students answer the exam. At the time, I had one bundle of SEM101 scripts (the subject shared with Dr. Athirah) and another bundle of scripts for the subject SEM112 that I teach alone. For the shared subject, I have three questions to mark, which accounts for 50% of the marks, and Dr. Athirah marks the other four questions. I thought I could finish the SEM102 bundle on Monday, so that I can exchange scripts with Dr. Athirah. But alas, I could only finish the bundle on Tuesday and made the exchange then. On exchanging, I had another five bundles to mark, totalling around 300 scripts for SEM102. The rest of the week was spent on these remaining five SEM102 bundles, focusing more on groups under her. I started marking for my own SEM102 group only on Friday evening (after returning four bundles of scripts back to Dr. Athirah). Noting I have the other subject SEM112 to look into and that the deadline for uploading the marks by Monday noon, I panicked. I told my other half, I should have cancelled the physiotherapy session last Saturday because that 'wasted' half a day.
That last weekend also saw all my sons back at home but I could not spend much time with them, for me to focus on marking. Also two problems came up then, that put me in a lot of distress - the kind of emotional disturbance that I was experiencing, I can say, would be equivalent to the recent 8.8 Richter earthquake. I had to make myself physically, emotionally and mentally strong, relying on whatever religious strength that I had with me. It was also unfortunate that I had left my usual Qur'an reading for the whole marking week, for it would have helped me better.
Come Sunday, I did not sleep to make sure I finished all my marking. Did some discussions with Dr. Athirah and the Head of Department, that went way after midnight, to settle and finalise the marks. The finalising carried on up to the Monday, when I am supposed to upload the marks. Naturally, I had to ask the Head to help get the extension and the deadline for me was extended to 6pm that day. I did what I could and the following Tuesday (after making sure that I rested, having not slept since Sunday), I still have to resolve some issues. Hopefully that will be the end of it. So today, I went to UPM to collect new stock of medicine as the ones I have are almost finished. Met Dr. Nurisya and Dr. Chan to talk about future plans.
Thus, it has been a stressful week for me. My prayer that Allah grant me ease in the near future. Perhaps the only happy news that I had received was the paper acceptance by the journal Quantum Information & Computation. The paper contains parts of what I have presented in the Siam conference (see this post - I'm still paying the expenses of this). Other than that, prior to the marking mania week, I met up with another theorist, hoping to help a cosmology research project that he is doing - I have not done anything just yet.
