Tag Archives: University

The Last Class: photography ceremony

Tuesday 13th December 2022, 10.45am (day 4,128)

ETC last class, 13/12/22

It’s the last class of the semester, and the done thing among students now is “get a photo of themselves with the lecturer” at this point. I acknowledge this but it did require leaving at least 20 minutes at the end of the session so the ceremony could take place: what you see here is the queue after at least half of them had already had their time. I was feeling like a cardboard cut-out of myself by this point, although not an unhappy one. Here I said, ‘right, I’m taking a photo of all you lot while you wait to take a photo of me’… and this is the result.

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Senate House, more intimately

Wednesday 22nd June 2022, 9.25am (day 3,954)

Senate House, 22/6/22

Senate House makes its second appearance on the blog, after debuting in July 2015. This shot is something of a repeat but I had to get it back on here this week as it’s the venue for my course (we are somwhere up the wall to the right). I do like this building, first for itself and its clean lines — and it’s good inside, as well — but also for the fact (repeated from seven years ago) that it’s the model for Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four. And you can quite readily picture it in that role.

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Spring graduation (2022 only)

Tuesday 5th April 2022, 3.10pm (day 3,876)

We don’t normally do spring graduations. These are replacements for the ceremonies that were going to take place in December and then were cancelled at two day’s notice because everyone in ‘Authority’ had another outbreak of paranoia that — let’s look back and be honest about this — turned out to have very little basis in sensible judgments of risk. Anyway, I’m glad they finally made it. It offers a, hopefully singular, opportunity to picture the daffodil/graduation conjunction. And yes, the litter is there but let’s try to work it into the composition somehow.

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A break between classes

Friday 10th December 2021, 11.15am (day 3,760)

University Place, 10/12/21

At times in a British December it’s hard to believe there is such a thing as sunlight, so this was a welcome burst on an otherwise grey day, illuminating those of us taking a break in University Place. For once, on this shot, I don’t mind the appearance of litter bins.

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Manchester, with sun and people

Tuesday 2nd March 2021, 2.20pm (day 3,477)

Sun on campus, 2/3/21

Misty and cold at home, but sunny and mild in Manchester all day, sun which filled the public spaces of campus with students, at least compared to how it’s been for the last two months. ‘Without making a political point out of it, the idea of ‘lockdown’ is just no longer being confirmed by observation. Small businesses are still being shafted, but otherwise, many people have obviously just returned to living their lives.

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Joe’s tour of inspection

Saturday 17th October 2020, 10.55am (day 3,341)

Joe inspects Staffs Uni, 17/10/20

Astonishing as this may seem, our Joe is now at the stage where he is putting together applications for university in 2021-22. Staffordshire University, in Stoke-on-Trent, is on the list, but all any of them can offer at the moment are ‘virtual open days’ which provide info, sure, but not a feeling for the place. And that’s essential if you’re going to spend three years anywhere. So we arranged for our own little tour of inspection today, both of the campus and the city. And despite it being dead, like the set of a post-apocalypse movie dead — the campus tour did not seem to be offputting. Perhaps then we will be seeing more of this place in the future.

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Turing Building entrance

Thursday 16th January 2020, 9.40am (day 3,065)

Turing building entrance, 15/1/20

Two Manchester morning shots in a row. I must be working. There’s still not many people on campus, so let’s keep pointing the camera at buildings. I quite like the Turing building, in fact. A decent bit of architecture.

Lately whenever I have tagged anything as university-related on this blog, the posts have been ‘liked’ by accounts that are obviously providing contract cheating ‘services’ to students — “easyessayonline” for example. Hi, guys. Let me point out that detection of this kind of thing is becoming easier as we redesign our assessment processes to focus on the student, not their words. Put extra stages into the process, like the submission of drafts and preparatory notes, and milled essays stand out like sore thumbs — and are failed. We don’t bother going through tiresome disciplinary procedures. We just fail them for blatantly having not done the work. I wonder if you advise your clients of this likelihood, and return their money in such cases. I doubt it.

You might argue that it is a free market and you have the right to exploit processes of deliberate fraud in order to make your profits. Whatever. But in the meantime, kindly don’t exploit my blog for advertising purposes, and fuck off.

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On campus (with optical illusion)

Monday 6th January 2019. 2.05pm (day 3,056)

Campus optical illusion, 6/1/20

A Manchester shot for the first time since December 19th. I must be showing my face on campus again. I like it when there’s nobody there. I only went in, basically, to up my step count.

There is a nice optical illusion on fhis shot. Look at the three pieces of guttering to the right and note how we seem here to have one of those ‘can this shape exist?’ dimensional paradoxes. I know how it’s happened, but it’s not immediately obvious on the picture itself.

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Lecture theatres — the same the world over?

Monday 25th November 2019, 9.20am (day 3,014)

UKSW lecture theatre, 25/11/19

A trip away to Indonesia might seem to offer a wealth of photo opportunities, but it’s a work trip — and the more that I do this kind of thing the more I realise that universities look much the same the world over. A Monday morning class, a decent turnout — but no one ever breaks the golden rule: Thou Shalt Not Sit In The Front Row.

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The Old Quadrangle

Tuesday 14th May 2019, 2.20pm (day 2,819)

Old Quadrangle, 14/5/14

Even Manchester’s crowded, fully urban campus can crank up the architecture quotient now and again, especially on a sunny May day. The Beyer Building and its cloak of ivy have featured before. My only day on campus this week, so I’m glad it was a pleasant one.

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