“Hello… hello? Can you hear me…..?” [pause] “I think you’re on mute….” Did the Starship Enterprise’s communications network have a ‘mute’ button do you think? Colleague Louis does his best.
I am not often to be found at work after 5pm — not ‘in the office’ anyway — and heaven forbid that uni’s now seemingly random system of allocating timetable slots gives me a 5-6pm class next year, or any other year. I can feel the ennui even when spying on them from across the corner of the Ellen Wilkinson Building.
I’m not saying this has never happened before — see the note — but today I can say that along with about twenty-five other people, I took a class with someone who is genuinely the world-leading authority in their specific field. Like, the ultimate teacher. I said to a colleague the other day that I was coming to this session on epistemic network analysis (it’s a way of depicting the patterns of conversation in groups, the way they talk about things) with some ’eminent American guy’ and she said, immediately, ‘Oh, you mean David Shaffer?’. Even Clare — who, while being a highly intelligent woman, does not move in the same strictly academic circles as I do — had heard of him. And Prof Shaffer turned out to be a friendly, agreeable chap, the two hours of my time very well spent.
Note: I think there are three other appearances of truly globally reputable teachers on here: Etienne Wenger, Michelle Brown and Jürgen Habermas.
Students from a quarter-century or more ago will know the UoM’s ‘North Campus’ as ‘UMIST’ — but this institution has long been merged out of existence, and quite a few of its buildings, like this one beside the Mancunian Way, have stood derelict for years. But there’s still an aspirational feel to this shot — climb the ladder and jump over the moon? And let’s get some blue sky into things. It’s been altogether too grey lately.
I am on sabbatical, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop going to campus. Sometimes I just need to stretch my legs. And there are certain inspirational qualities it provides: today, these included the light, particularly as experienced outside the Stopford Building on Oxford Road this morning.
Prof. Alexander’s bust has long graced the entrance hall of the building on Manchester’s campus that bears his name. This kind of thing happens most years, to be honest. He seems to bear it with stoic dignity. I don’t think he looks all that unhappy — a bit resigned, maybe.
The last class of the semester, and as I’m on sabbatical for several months next year, the last one for me until late September 2024. And that’s just fine by me. I do — generally — like teaching but it is tiring, time-consuming work and if I want to do some proper thinking I can do with taking a break from it. The last class of the semester also gives rise to the annual ceremony of ‘having pictures taken with one’s professor’ — I make people upset if a 20-minute window isn’t offered up at the end.
At this time of year you just take what comes, when it comes to the weather. This week it appears to be coming sunny — though cold. As you can see, most of the leaves are gone, but a few trees are still determined to sustain their blaze of glory for a little while longer yet.
Look, it’s got my name on it (on the pink bit), my handwriting and everything. The ideas were those of everyone around the table however, and things are not yet finished, either. I can occasionally still be motivated to think about things that matter to my employer — and thus my students — rather than me personally.
I guess if you are the kind of incredible natural acrobat that a squirrel is, it’s easy enough to adapt to features in the urban environment — like this fence next to one of the bike sheds on campus. It looks almost as if I have used a flash to catch this shot but it’s actually a brief flash of wan November sunlight. (In fact there are almost no shots taken with a flash on this blog, as I never use it: maybe, literally, two or three out of all 4,463.)
Being 42 