When you’re a busy person, there’s little time to entertain self-doubt about your practice. You just get on with it. 

8.30 am: A slight flurry of snow that dissipated into rain. There was a sprinkling on the hills to the south. A grey blanket of cloud erupted into baroque cumulusness, before returning to its former state:

9.00 am: The annual undergraduate Exhibition 1 & 2: ‘Introduction’. This is, in part, a pep-talk to set us all on the royal road to self-improvement, ambition, and achievement. 9.45 am: Today we held the first in a series of Visiting Days, when applicants present themselves and their portfolios for review. The threat of bad weather will, no doubt, have persuaded many to come another day. I was in perpetual ‘stand-by’ mode, during which time teaching and assessment admin would be completed, pastoral duties acquitted, and writing furthered. (In the background, Penderecki’s Song of Cherubim.)

12.30 pm: an early lunch. The snow had melted into puddles:

1.30 pm: The first of my interviewees arrived. How hard it is to envision your life at 18 years old. At that age, I knew only today. And, in reality, that’s all we can ever know. ‘Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring’, the Proverbs advises. Sadly, I’ve outlived too many students who’d expected to have had a long and fruitful career ahead of them.

2.45 pm: Back to admin of the most butt-painful sort. So often in academia we construct ideals and expectations about education and it process that bear little relation to the delivery of teaching. Learning is often a chaotic experience. Like the birth of stars, intellectual awareness proceeds sometimes violently and messily. 4.30 pm: A file failed to save entirely. An hour’s work was lost. I made it up again in 15 minutes.

5.10 pm: Homeward.

7.30 pm: After the evening diary update and inbox scrutiny, I, now tired and longing to doze, pressed on with the writing. Discipline is established for times like this.