And most of us were listening to it — honest. (To be fair to the guy on the left, he’s keeping an eye on the Zoom room.) Golly, three days in a row in Manchester: that’s an outbreak of keenness, particularly in a week when I didn’t have any lectures to deliver.
It’s good to have some sustenance while waiting for colleagues (and Peter is a Professor, a rank I will now almost certainly never attain) to offer their opinions on one’s writing. That paper might even get finished one of these days.
There is still just under a month to go until I start teaching the latest intake, but plenty needs doing to be ready for that day. Hence the length of the morning meeting. I skulk around, visible as a shadow in the mirror, while my colleagues emerge in the direction of lunch.
Too nice a day to have lunch sat inside, and a few minutes after I made this decision this group joined me in the courtyard. This space has appeared on here several times before, and as it’s still not exactly easy to work out how to get in it, this is as many people as I’ve ever seen using it at one time.
Another photo of a pack member — in a sense. Mark is one of the colleagues with whom I work most closely. We were recording a podcast this morning, hence the microphone.
Time for the new academic year to get going. Behind us, as I took this shot, the latest clump of aspirants, our objects of care for this year — the new students. Ivy tries to outline the scale of it all to colleague Mark. I think we’re ready for the whistle.
Spent the day doing much the same things as yesterday, hence this photo hits much the same themes. But still, why not? People! In rooms together, thinking! It’s about time.
These are the people I have come all the way to Toronto to work with — because we all decided, no, we are not going to sit and try to interact behind screens. We needed to work together. Ahmad on the left, Dina on the right. They look kinda happy about the prospect, as I was.
At this time last year we had our annual ‘staff awayday‘ entirely in Zoombieland, and frankly it was the lowest point of that bleak, lonely time for me. I could return to the point about why a largely vaccinated population is still being told they should live in fear, but let’s not — instead, let’s at least celebrate the fact that there were some work colleagues around today. Only a few, but they were there, and how much better the day was for it. Left-to-right; Steve, Miri, Stephen (pictured in his office two weeks ago), Miguel. Happy Fridays, everyone. Take back your public spaces.
I don’t normally depict work colleagues on here but it’s worth making an exception today. For three years at least I’ve been working on getting a new hybrid (mixture of online and on-campus) MA launched (in Educational Leadership), and over this weekend we are finally welcoming our first batch of students. Here are some of them, along with Paul, Bee and Steve, fellow academics, looking happy about this at the meal we organised to mark the occasion. And I am glad too, it’s always a relief to see something come to fruition. There’ll be more of this on Sunday, a working day this weekend (a price to be paid)…
Being 42 