I have just downloaded an app to help me manage my drugs. I know I keep moaning but given the number of variables it really is incredibly complicated. I even have to schedule breakfast to ensure that one drug is accompanied by food, needless to say there is another that must be taken without food. Some drugs must not be taken close to other drugs. It’s like overseeing the Oscar ceremony dinner table arrangements.

Anyway, this post will round off my autobiographical series with a reflection on the years I spent as a pretend academic.

Some of you may not know just how unsuited I was for the final chapter of my career. I have been accused of being annoyingly self-deprecating and I think there may be some truth in that but by any normal standards of measurement I am only of average intelligence and in some areas well below average. To teach at a university and to do academic research in general the expectation is that you are smart. During my 20 odd years at Hull I struggled. Of course, there are some things that I am good at and some of those things helped me get by, but I never shook off the feeling that in comparison with what I would call proper academics I was a cheap knock off. I should have had a bit more confidence. My wonderfully encouraging supervisor Alistair guided me to what he said was a rare achievement in his department, a dissertation with no corrections. I entered the examination room a mere mister and left a Doctor. I was bloody proud of myself the comprehensive school failure but my Dad was beyond proud he was witnessing his own coronation as a father who had not failed his son, something he had always felt very deeply because I didn’t do the 11 plus. I didn’t do the 11 plus cos he thought i was too thick. I kind of loved him for that directness and for his unwavering insight. He got it right

Once I began to settle into my new role as lecturer academic I was obliged to go to conferences. I was profoundly impressed by some  of the academics attending particularly those from disciplines I admired such as engineering or computer science. I confess to being less impressed by academics from the arts and humanities but I think that was based on the mistaken belief that I could do what they were doing and be less boring (they tend to read their papers word for word at conferences even though you have the printed version in front of you) whereas with the engineers I definitely couldn’t do what they did and they made things and showed the gizmo off or showed videos. Surprisingly they were often better presenters than some of those presenting at performance conferences who in some cases claimed to be performers.

You may have gathered theoretical academics are not keen on those that come from a practice background and the reverse applies. My CV was by their standards impressive but when I tried a few ’I worked with Dustin Hoffman’ show offs it did NOT go down well and after about a year I didn’t ever mention my past professional career.

Bizarrely for someone who grew up quite scared of the world I had one redeeming quality, I was not afraid of having a go. I have no idea where that came from. It certainly wasn’t my upbringing I don’t think it was school. I have never been physically brave but even though my parents weren’t personally adventurous it’s possible they created such a strong safety net around me that I felt able to fail safely. Perhaps that was their gift to me and if so I should be bloody grateful. This certainly helped established me as a dooer and consequently I attracted responsibility much too quickly. Within a year I was running an entire subject area in Digital Media after my boss went off to China. I made so many cockups but survived as the students liked me. Other than me everybody else in my team were visiting lecturers, none of them including me knew or cared about module handbooks, assessment grids or marking schemes and had we been inspected my academic career might have been very short. Anyway, we had quite a nice time and I believe the students actually did learn about design after all every one of these visiting lecturers were practitioners and good ones at that. Not academics.

That said I really liked the fact that academics tended to avoid small talk. In the reception area where we all hung around propping a danish pastry in one hand and the conference schedule in the other we would be forced to talk. I loved that fact that the opening gambit was not the dreaded ‘hold up on the M3′  conversation but what is it you are researching, what’s your field, something useful, informative maybe an opportunity to share something you have in common. I may be glamorising it – some conversations I recall were excruciating when it became quite clear that this person had zero interest in anything other than pterodactyl flight modes and you weren’t going to be adding any great insights to that. Mind you his flying model pterodactyl was soo cool.

I didn’t like the fact that academics could not take direct criticism. I once pointed out to a colleague in the Q&A session that his definition of coloratura soprano was wrong. It was, I knew I am married to one. The room went silent and I never did it again. Academics are quite precious creatures by and large. Easily offended and can be quite highly strung. I tended to make friends with the ones that weren’t and once again they tended to be the ones that made things not wrote about them.

Particularly in the arts but also in other ‘softer disciplines’ academics worry about being taken seriously after all its just possible your career mulling over new interpretations of the interpretation of the Victorian gothic novel by the early interpreters could be just a never ending circle of interpretations or to put it another way a indecipherable cloud of words that no one dares contradict because it cannot be proven, tested or evaluated even if they think its just plain wrong – like the coloratura incident. In the arts nothing is wrong and of course that’s right but how you go about communicating it’s absence of wrongness can be wrong or at least bum numbingly boring or brain numbingly confusing.

No I didn’t like the Arty discipline I was a supposed academic in, I just wanted to make things and certainly did not wish to write about them.

I tried to move up the ranks to senior lecturer (more money) but never succeeded. Ok that I wasn’t smart enough couldn’t have helped. I didn’t join a single committee. I avoided external validation like the plague (going to other institutions that were using our name for their degrees) I didn’t accept offers to review other peoples work. I hardly ever published, I certainly wasn’t going to write a book. But I did make installations, concerts, films, shows, software and a roadshow. I also won some modest grants and made a bit of a splash at the odd conference and built a very positive relationship with Newcastle Uni and York. 

I am really not bitter. I didn’t deserve it. I was not a committed academic, I was a frustrated artist maker and now finally in retirement that’s exactly what I am – without the frustrated bit.

Hurrah again for me.

My academic career at least the research side, the bit I liked best came to an end just as the Crest roadshow finished and I went to the doctor with backache and indigestion. He sent off a blood test and received results that made no sense. My blood was screwed and within a few weeks and umpteen tubes down the throat I was told I had multiple myeloma and amyloidosis. The GP had to look that one up. There was no cure but there was treatment. I was on and off work for the next two years. Frequently working from home and this is before lockdown when it became mainstream do it was not easy. The university of Hull were very very good to me and I continued to have a teaching job from 2014 till 2023 when I retired.

Getting near the end now no more cap ‘i’s as I rush to the finish line at 4:35. Had a break watching an easy German Video on eating German food in New York which has made me very hungry another side effect of steroids and I also read some more of the translation into German of ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night’ which I was told was easy but they lied. Slightly more concerning is the degree to which I appear to have inadvertently filched the style for some of my Tuffin stories despite having never read it

I cant say i loved teaching but i liked my students and was always nice to them. If not that useful. I didn’t get stressed although i worked hard. I hated marking and giving feedback so i introduced video feedback instead of written feedback which went down very well with the other staff in my team and students much preferred it. It’s probably halved the time it takes us to mark and we can comment and show their work at the same time.

Summarising my academic foray. More than anything i longed to do the job i was originally hoping to do at the Scarborough campus which was to float between the digital, musical and theatrical curriculums and encourage interdisciplinarity – but universities work in silos and although i tried several times i could never garner an effective level of support with a few exceptions, either from the students or staff. This was made worst once we were moved to the Hull campus where the stakes were higher with more gear and more students to satisfy. 18 year olds in general are quite conservative. ‘I have come hear to play in bands and that all I want to do. I don’t want to collaborate with film makers and actors.’ Sad that.

That’s its for autobiography. Thank you Keith and Barbara for inspiring me to do it. I have not enjoyed it but that’s not anybody’s fault. I somehow thought that the opportunity to reflect might be fun but it isn’t after all I know what’s going to happen next and in my normal posts poems and stories I don’t.

if you made it this far you deserve acclaim and love – thank you.

last minute medical update 4:49 – despite the complexity of my pain killer drug choices I really am starting to think we may be cracking it. I have several optional drugs I can take as top ups and I am using those much much less. I think I am moving toward just gabapentin for the nerve pinching pain and oxycodone for the other pains – that could mean just 5 doses a day which would be so much easier to manage than my current theoretical inventory of 17 separate doses not including my chemo and other regular drugs. My drug reminder app seems to be dinging all day. Anyway despite being left a bit high and dry to sort it out for myself with Maria’s stern support things look like they are moving forward. Here I am writing and reading and watching for a couple of hours with zero pain. Hurrah.