7.00 am: Up and into the shower. 8.00 am: There was a downpour: relentless and unforgiving, like the world today:

8.30 am: I finalised and sent the research assessment forms and, then, returned to plethora of emails and arrangements that were necessary to get this starship out of space dock by the close of the weekend. 10.15 am: The weather was unsettled – threatening one thing, behaving contrarily. When I arrived, the returning undergraduates were being welcomed by the Head of School in the large lecture theatre.

11.00 am: The eager faces of new first year students lined the staircase, waiting their turn to be induced (if that’s the word). Apprehension was in the air. Moving from the educational culture of school to university is an enormous leap. This’ll be one of the most challenging weeks of their degree period. I made myself known at the meeting:

Round and about, departing MA fine art students were bundling their exhibition works out through the front door. It was sad to see them go, but good to know that they’re on their way to a professional career. ‘The best is yet to come!, I reminded them. An object that this, barely:

I received a greetings card ‘thank you’ from one this morning, saying:

Aberystwyth and its people have become such a huge part of my life; and although I’m ready for the next step, I’ll miss it all terribly … I’ll never forget my time at this wonderful University.

2.00 pm: I held the first Personal Tutorial meeting with my first-year contingent. I’m apt to sound more like a parent than a teacher on these occasions. By the end, I was pep-talked out:

For the remainder of the afternoon and into the late evening, I constructed lists of the new MA and PhD intake and allocated supervisors, before Mr Garrett and I walk around the premises, tomorrow, to assign students to studio spaces.