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The first meeting

Having found some supervision work, the first task is to arrange the first supervision. It is possible to make all your supervision arrangements by post or by e-mail, but most supervisors find it easier to have a preliminary meeting to fix supervision times, give arrangements for handing in work, and to set supervision work. Here are some hints concerning these matters.

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If you have, say, four supervision pairs a week (or per fortnight) the simplest procedure is to name four times and leave it to the students to choose which pair goes to which supervision. You may believe that students are here to do mathematics, not to play cricket, act or row, but some flexibility in timing is often appropriate and in some cases essential (for example, some women students may be nervous of having to wander about Cambridge after dark).

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You are expected to mark students' work in advance, so you must set a deadline for handing in work. (If you have an official deadline and a later unofficial deadline you will find, within two or three weeks, that all the work is handed in five minutes before the later deadline. You are therefore well advised to have a single deadline and stick to it.) It is unfair to students to ask them to hand in work more than 24 hours, say, before the supervision and, if you do demand a longer period, the students may forget what they were thinking when they wrote their work. Make sure that the students know where to hand in the work (e.g. `My pigeonhole at college', `The pigeonhole marked in the DAMTP pigeon holes by the main entrance of CMS'). Remember that CMS is closed after 5.00 and over the weekend. It is a bad plan for the students to send their work to you by college post, which is slow and can be unreliable, or to give it in to your college porters' lodge, since the next post round may not be until the next day.

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Many lecturers do not issue the first example sheet until after a week or so has passed. You may be able to get round this by asking the lecturer for a copy of his or her first example sheet it or by getting a copy of the first example sheet for the previous year. The main problem (and the reason for the lecturers' delay) is that most courses start slowly and students will not have covered much ground in the first week. Generally, the Director of Studies will want you to give a fixed number of supervisions (4 per 24-lecture course, normally) so you cannot afford to waste one: you must ensure that the lecturer has covered sufficient material for the first supervision. This usually means arranging the first supervision at the end of the third week of lectures. You may not be able to fit all the supervisions into the same term as the course is given. It is fairly common practice to give the last supervision at the beginning of the following term.