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Showing posts from March, 2025

Notes on the academic year, part I

With today’s tutorial, I slam the door on the 2024–2025 academic year - a year that began, by most estimates, sometime after the Norman Conquest but before the invention of the dishwasher, and has only recently released us from its stubborn and faintly damp grasp. Term 1 stretched on like one of those Russian novels you feel virtuous owning but morally depleted trying to finish - page after page of existential trudgery. Term 2, by contrast, shot past like a shopping trolley (or my wheelchair) careening downhill: fast, erratic, and ending in a minor collision. Except for March. March, evidently, now comes in a new 14-week format, an extended director’s cut of confusion and deadlines. Since the memories are still vaguely warm, like the sad slice of toast forgotten under the tea towel, I am scribbling down some notes before the rot sets in, just enough to remind myself in October, when I’m muttering “how the hell did we get here again?” into my second coffee, that I have been through this...