Marking and others things

I have just finished marking for this week assignment. As the students only hand in assignments fortnightly, I will have no marking duties for next week. I am currently marking for two modules and each assignment for each module usually takes me up 6 to 7 hours (I am not joking...try to mark a class of 30+ with each about 8-10 problems in algebra or a class of 60+ with each about 5 problems in cryptography takes a lot of time). Luckily it is only a fortnightly affair.

Anyway marking assignment makes me realized how most of my friends who are teachers are much worse in this aspect. Sometimes I wonder how they cope with it. They are basically marking and marking everyday for the whole year round and that's not including their usual teaching loads and "arrows". Respect for them. Just marking fortnightly, I already cow pei cow bu. Wonder how they can da han...

There will be no marking for next week for me, which is good for me. Hopefully I can stay focused for the coming week. I have already finished reading the proof of the main Iwasawa conjecture and now hope to start learning some algebraic geometry language in preparation for the learning of Etale Cohomology. Also I want to learn some duality theorems concerning cohomology of profinite groups. These duality theorems are in some sense analog to the, for instances, Poincare duality theorems in manifolds. These theorems were developed by John Tate and are very important in the study of number theory.

I am applying for some scholarships offered to non-Canadian students. However there is only vacancy of 60 and it is for the whole Canada and every father-mother-son discipline. Nevertheless, the department wants us to give a try. Fine with me except now I am mulling over how to write my study plan for 2007/2008. Don't know what is there for me to write. I see my fellow course mates all writing about their research goals/directions and things like that. I currently still have no clear research directions other than "something on algebraic number theory". Not sure why is this so. Is it I have been focusing too much on learning the basics or my knowledge is still too shallow to even go into a research topic? Well I guess that will be something for me to think over...