Exam time!

Yes, weeks 13 and 14 are as ever exam weeks. And that means that we’re all involved in invigilation at some point.

I’ve had to be present in three -  in one large one where I acted as the “senior”, i.e. the person in charge, one slightly smaller one where I was just another invigilator and I also had to supervise one student who was allowed to sit his exams apart from others and who was allowed a little extra time.

That was about eight hours in total.

We’re not supposed to read or mark whilst we invigilate. So it’s actually taking quite a bit of our time. However, we can do some work when we’re just supervising an individual student. I actually managed to read a third of Primo Levi’s If This is a Man / The Truce. It’s a set text on a module in which I’m lecturing next semester. I’m not talking about that book but as it’s so fundamental to that course it seems important to read it.

The other exams, though, seem to rob us of time.

And yet. It’s actually quite a useful thinking space. You have to be there. No one can expect anything else of you at precisely that time. Everything stops. You can clear your head. It’s incredibly peaceful.

If you do have to take a student to the bathroom, the contrast as your walk out into the “real world” is startling. One moment old-fashioned library silence. The next the normal hustle and bustle of the campus.  

It’s all quite formal – put your bags at the front / back / turn off your mobile phones / no notes allowed in coats or pockets, no one to leave in the first hour or the last fifteen minutes. By being here you are saying you are fit to take the exam. Papers are stamped with a random number to prevent later substitution. Names are hidden. Each student has an allocated seat. Toilet breaks are recorded on the student’s paper and we have to search the toilets before the beginning of the exam.

Yet today the paper-setter who is also the senior invigilator puts them at ease with a joke before they start.  

There’s quite a bit to do, in fact. Give out the papers, read out the instructions, check IDs, take students to the bathroom, sign out those who finish early, answer questions, find spare pens and collect in the papers. And in between those activities you patrol, and sit, and think. You’re in a bubble, out of your normal world. The time passes surprisingly quickly.  

Then, when it’s all over comes the marking. I don’t have any exam marking but I’m in the middle of a heap of coursework. We have to get on: the external examiner and the exam board need them.

The bubble was nice while it lasted.   

Back to the Beginning

I’m currently on leave. But I’m never quite completely on holiday. After all, it is Christmas time and Christmas is a time full of stories and I deal in stories.  I write them and teach other people how to write them. In fact, I’m writing now, of course. Away from home, I’m reading a lot too. So work never goes completely away.

It’s a slightly different holiday this time. For the first time, we’re spending Christmas in a favourite summer holiday spot of ours in the south of Spain. It’s different at this time of year  – the sun is still hot but the days are a lot shorter and the evenings and early mornings decidedly chilly. 

And it makes me think. If it wasn’t for this place I probably wouldn’t be a writer or a writing teacher at all.

Super Students

I’m privileged to teach some super students. Here are some examples.

Dedication

One student apologises because her work, she feels is not all that strong. She wrote it on her iPhone as she was hospitalised for a few days. But she did the work and although it’s very much first draft it’s showing considerable potential. Especially as it was written on an iPhone.

Research in Creative Writing

My first formal supervision. My PhD supervisor invited me in for an early meeting. I slid the half mile from where I lived along the early-frost sprinkled pavements of the little town in north Wales. The heating had only just come on in his office and the end of my nose, the tips of my fingers and my feet remained cold. We could see our breath as we talked.

It was all going quite well. I’d completed about two thirds of the first draft of my young adult novel. I knew my research question was to do with what a young adult novel actually is. The experiment for me here was writing something of that length, writing for young adults and writing science fiction.

Of course, I’ve since established that the young adult novel has six characteristics that are sometimes present and one that is always present, that science fiction – or fantasy, real life, history or whatever else - is actually the setting and not a theme, and science fiction and fantasy perform the same function for adolescents that glove puppets and anthropomorphism do for young children.

“You should read X, Y and Z,” he suggested.

The hour ended. I dutifully trotted off to the university library. There were no young adult books. The explosion only happened at the turn of the century – though of course there have always been a few classic ones around. There was very little science fiction, examples were mainly classical and there were only a few critical works.

Later I wondered into town and happened upon the Oxfam second hand bookshop. There I found most of the titles he’d mentioned and an encyclopaedia of science fiction- all at very reasonable prices.

Most of my research was “out there” rather than in university libraries, though a couple of visits to Roehapmton were in order and it’s always useful to read scholarly texts in order to be reminded of academic tone and to prevent us from reinventing the wheel: what have other writers done before us? We find out by studying English Literature, a discipline that used to raise eyebrows as much as Creative Writing does today.   

Creative Writing is at once one of the oldest and one of the youngest disciplines. Much of our work is out in the world. At the institution where I now work the emphasis is on innovation and experiment; that feels good and in keeping with what a university is supposed to be about.   

I’m kept on my toes. The young adult novel is changing from what it was like when I completed my PhD. I have to be aware of that, adjust my practice and teach my students what I know.

But it’s a great life. As one of my undergraduates said to me the other day: “Gosh, you read a lot of books don’t you?” Well, yes. I’m duty bound to. Feel sorry for me!      

Research and teaching balance – what universities are all about

Financial considerations

Recently the government announced that there should be more teaching in universities and less research. Yet because of cuts in funding, universities have had to make redundancies and in order to deliver any sort of meaningful programme, staff have had to take on extra teaching, leaving little time for any research.

Some thoughts on the workshop

Final portfolio

This is a 40 credit two semester long module that is compulsory for our creative writing students. They work on their own writing and share it three times a semester with their own group. I have twelve in my group so four people submit each week. So far – we’re Week 4 – we’ve had at least three submissions a week with only one student failing to submit and only one student failing to turn up to get feedback.

Students email their work to me and each other 48 hours in advance of the class. So, we study four texts each week and get thirteen opinions on each. Even if someone is unavoidably absent form class they will email their comments, though of course then these remain unmoderated by myself.

A skill gap

The first couple of weeks went well. This last week, however, I felt I was doing all the work and the students were making little contribution. It may have been tiredness. I don’t think it was laziness. It was clear they had all read the texts. In fact one couple had got together during the week and looked at their texts together. I think it was more they didn’t know what to say. This course teaches them to edit and critique. At this point, however, they may need a little more guidance. Time to give them some more strategies. 

How research feeds into teaching

Students at university don’t follow a curriculum in the same way as they do in other forms of education.  They are learning about what their particular lecturers have found out in their research. Yes, of course, there is some crossover from institution to institution – some of the givens in any one area will be the same. But what each lecturer emphasizes and finds important will vary. And year on year, although modules will usually retain their titles, the content will be enriched and expanded. Research must feed into teaching.  What students learn must be informed by research.