All in a day's work

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If you need a room on campus, you go to Jo. The timetables are created by her colleagues Mark Carter (arts) and Mike Wilkinson (science), but it's Jo Scott, as Room Bookings Clerk for the last ten years, who takes one-off term-time bookings and most of the flak...

If someone wants to book a room, they phone or email. I can't book rooms for students over the phone - they have to come and see me in the Student Systems Office in Sussex House.

I ask who's teaching, what the booking's for, how many people are involved … and then they might say they need a computer room, or they want to show a video, or whatever.

If it's a booking with a well-known speaker or a topic that might be controversial, I have to let Security know. For weekend bookings, I have to make sure the porters know, because the rooms have to be opened, and shut at night.

What's interesting about the job is using space efficiently, so you don't just book rooms willy-nilly … it's like a giant jigsaw puzzle, or a Rubik's cube. As one thing moves out, something else moves in.

I allocate rooms using our Syllabus Plus software, which we've had for about five years. The timetabling process is quite complex: there are hundreds of rooms on campus, but we've still got pressure on teaching space.

We could do with a few more teaching rooms - in fact, quite a few more - and a curtailed syllabus. If students had fewer choices and fewer combinations of choices, it would make the job of timetabling so much easier!

For example, there's this drama course that needs a three-hour block, but the only possible time - when all the students from different degrees can be together - is Friday at four o'clock. And Friday afternoon … well, it won't be popular, let's put it that way!

Late classes and 9.15 starts aren't popular, either - and of course the most popular choice for a research day is a Monday or a Friday, which restricts what we can do.

Some people don't appreciate the enormity of what the three of us are doing, and make very demanding requests. Whether they get the specific rooms they want depends on the impact on the rest of the timetable, but generally we manage to accommodate most requests.

Sometimes it might take the timetablers a lot of time and tweaking, but mostly we don't have to say no. Sometimes the only room available is an unpopular one - we've got some unpopular rooms, as well: for example, some have no windows, or chairs with writing flaps (instead of proper tables and chairs)...

I get the majority of the calls, because my name is best known. So I'm the one whose phone rings the most, and I am on the phone an awful lot.

However, I don't get many really angry people … not many. There are certain individuals who are always on the phone first when the timetable comes out.

With three timetables a year, there are three peaks in my workload. The busiest term for one-off room bookings is the summer term, because teaching is only three, four or five weeks, and then it's all exams and revision courses.

When I started, I couldn't believe the job was going to be as busy as it was. I think it's actually got busier: there are more students, more courses, more combinations of courses, and more tutors. But with it being computerised … that's made my load much lighter. I used to have to handwrite everything.

Over ten years, though, my job's become more routine. The thing that really keeps me here is the people I deal with every day. Generally they're nice people … and I enjoy talking to them!