Icarus @ 59 # 112

Working in a University can be the strangest experience. Most of the time the picture on the left is the norm for me. Even on holiday I get up and read, research and write, working on my own a great deal of the time when I am not teaching - which I only do 24 weeks out of any year. The picture on the left is me on holiday working before the rest of the house wakens. Its a heady life, I guess, beavering away, followed by a swim and a breakfast on the verandah. Hard to complain about it. And the picture on the right is the pomp and ceremony, the graduation ceremony and the best bit about the job. But often these pictures hide the fact that there is an entire micro-living going on in Universities all the time. I am ever astonished by the way we can move from a gritty debate on Dante, to a (not always complimentary) discussion about latest management initiatives and then to be with the same colleagues as they deal with pastoral issues with such a delicate and dedicated nature. The job is a strange one, you are involved in people's lives all the time and an intellectual rationale can be followed by an arm on someone's shoulder - and it is just as likely to be a nineteen-year-old undergraduate as a Deputy Vice Chancellor. Sure we hear grumbles about long teaching semesters and marking and suchlike but I like working at the University of Winchester and I like my colleagues and students very much, all of it, the whole day-to-day, year-on-year challenge. Every day is a reminder about how good life and people can be. There is only one song - bring it on Joe Walsh, life's been good to me so far: