September 30, 2019

8.00 am: A late breakfast. Keep it simple; keep it pure:

9.00 am: The first week of teaching began and, with it, the old routines recommenced. I set my face to undertake teaching admin for the week ahead, prepare teaching materials, respond to the weekend’s incoming emails, initiate my own, disinfect my inbox of loathsome, nuisance, and lying scam-mail, write references, support students in a pickle (already), and try to look beyond the horizon. A typical Monday morning in term-time, as it were. On the weekend, I’d started a month-long course of antibiotics to clear an infection that was identified by my recent CT scan. Today, I’m plagued by headaches, lassitude, and nausea: the most common side effects. (In the background: Fripp and Eno’s An Index of Metals (1975).)

It was good to see the School of Art doing so well for both Art History and Art & Design in The Times rankings:

But an equally significant and important index to quality is the one that we, as staff, carry around inside us. Among its criteria are ‘fulfilment’, ‘joy’, ‘optimism’, ‘work-life balance’, and ‘personal growth’. If these boxes can’t be ticked and score well, well … whatever other measures are applied to our provision and attainment, represent only the partial story. The maintenance of high-standards in education requires much sacrifice these days.

12.00 pm: On with the Blackboardization of my modules’ content, beginning with ‘Curriculum Outline’. Ensuring that everyone is fully apprised of their module’s requirements takes time in the short term, but saves a great deal of explanation later. I paused to hear the rain, attentively:

3.30 pm: Back to my main website and page-by-page updates, corrections, and identification of style anomalies. I maintained the task until the close of evening.

Today’s Tweets:

Previous Post
September 28, 2019
Next Post
October 1, 2019

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Fill out this field
Fill out this field
Please enter a valid email address.