More teaching, though of a different sort. To celebrate the last active (for me, anyway) week of the semester, just for once I thought it would be nice to try to get them to do a bit of talking. You know, to each other. I guess it worked, more or less.
In the last of my taught classes last year, it took about three-quarters of an hour (or felt like it did) for all the students to get their shots with teacher that then go onto social media, somewhere. (And, see also 2022’s version of same.). As I am, essentially, a grumpy man, I insisted that this year I would do it on everyone’s behalf. Apologies to those whom I have eclipsed.
There have been very few shots of my 4,858 so far which have been taken using the self-timer, but there have been some: any of the astronomical efforts (e.g. this shot of Jupiter and its moons, of which I’m still quite proud) will have used it. But I’m sure this is the first where I’ve used the timer to take a photo of myself, with or without others, and used it as the daily picture. So there you are, this is what I look like when I’m not taking a photo.
My Monday afternoons as a student continue, though the next one isn’t going to be until February. It crossed my mind today that we are being taught in much the same way as we would have been a thousand years ago, had we been doing much the same in an abbey somewhere. Look at examples of other people’s writing, be told about some idiosyncracies and abbreviations, and then do our best to reproduce it all. We don’t get handed a quill pen and some parchment, which is a shame, but then again these were valuable items in medieval times and perhaps not to be wasted on students just starting out. It does work if one merely wants to learn to write, or rather to copy: but although I admit my Latin is getting a bit better, there is no interpretation here. What does any of this text actually mean, not just in translation, but really mean for anyone’s life? Beats me. But for that, I guess we would have taken different classes.
Dina was last seen in Toronto in October 2021 and, as part of a project which has been (so far) a wholly positive development but with which I won’t bore you here, has been visiting Manchester this week. Other than myself, Clare and Joe this makes her only the second person to appear on this blog in two different countries and the first on two different continents.
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.
During this week at the London Rare Books School I have felt privileged to be taught by Professor Michelle Brown, second from the left here. What an awesome fund of knowledge she has, seemingly knowing absolutely everything that happened to everyone before about 1500 AD. Like being taught physics by Richard Fenynman, and the sort of experience that you just ain’t gonna get through Zoom, sorry.
When academics grow up they still behave as their students do: sitting at the back and hoping no one picks on them for input. I wonder how many chairs there are at the University: tens of thousands I imagine. Perhaps the entire student population could sit down there at once, but many of them would definitely be visible at the front.
A tough assignment today. Online classes late in the afternoon then another in the evening meant I couldn’t go out. The world outside was grey and dull — though at least, still light, at approaching 8pm. This is the kind of day that will eventually kill the creative spirit in me, and thus, this blog. But here’s my best effort.
Before 2020 I never minded doing online teaching, because it offered variety, and was not the only game in town. But there are limits, and I probably reached mine about this time last year. Fortunately, a sense of Real Normal has largely returned. This particular class was always designed to be an online session — when it works, use it, when not, get face-to-face. Steve, one of my PhD students, peeks his face out from his virtual cell.
This has been my life for days, and will be for some time to come. This is not even a Covid thing; this endless increase in my workload is presented as something inevitable, a sign of success even. Four years ago there was a third of this number.
Being 42 