8 weeks later.
“When does your course start?” Marisa asked, surveying the first of the plastic boxes on the storeroom shelves.
“I’m registering next Wednesday, and the induction – I’m calling it indoctrination – is on Thursday. It’s funny, having to cut through the lines of students for the last two weeks, and now I’m going to be one of them… gonna wear my staff ID card just to confuse as many people as possible.”
“At least you’ve been here long enough to get accustomed to it, so you won’t have that deer-in-the-headlights look they’ve got!”
“I know… but I still feel a bit behind where I wanted to be by now. My evil plan was to get all the books on the reading list out of the library before the students came in, and I did get a lot of them out, but have I actually read them? I’m just fattening up Goldsmiths library with my late fees!”
“Well, moving is a big upheaval, at least you’ve done that, and you’re settled in now. If you can survive doing that, and clearing out 288 at the same time, you can manage. It’s lunchtime… you coming to the pub?”
“Yep. I feel like the whole life-support-machinery is just now starting to get onto autopilot after a couple of months of pushing it along in front of me, waiting for it to get into gear. ”
The Educational Studies department maintained a delegation at the pub each Friday lunchtime. Individuals came and went, but the department was continuously represented by academics and administration staff as a matter of honour. After a morning of clearing out the downstairs stock room, the pub needed little to recommend it.
They found the department at their table and joined them.
“Hey Dennis,” said Marisa, “this is Lee. She’s our new general technician for the next few months. Dennis lectures on the PGCE Secondary. Lee’s just been telling me about her MA, it’s starting next week.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that in?” said Dennis, swirling his gin and tonic.
“Contemporary Art Theory.”
“Is that all writing?” said the art technician, adding, “No, I wouldn’t want to do that. No, no.”
“All writing, no practical – I was just saying I felt bad about not having made any new work in the last few months, but I could say this is part of my general practice, so right now I don’t feel as bad about concentrating on the writing side.”
“Which department’s that?” asked Dennis.
“Visual Cultures. I’ll be cheating on you with them. Or am I cheating on them with you?”
“Well we’re all for a bit of that kind of thing, it’ll be good for the students to be able to talk to you about what you’re doing there.”
“It’s probably going to overlap both ways – I took home one of last year’s spare MA in Education course packs to read because it was about masculinities and femininities in education, and that’s the kind of thing I’m hoping to go into with this. When I get through my mountain of reading, I mean.”
“You’ll have to tell us about life on the other side next week.”
