Norwich and Back
Back from a quick visit to Norwich, where I stayed a couple of nights with Mum and caught up with a few friends too. They go quickly, those visits back 'home' and there's always a pattern to them. My own flat is out of the circuit now, as it's rented out, so it's back to the far earlier pattern of sleeping at one's childhood home.
I had one evening out of dinner kindly cooked by married writing friends and made the acquaintance of another lady who used to work for Continuing Ed at UEA, so we had a good spectrum of conversation; I was sorry to have to leave early. Mind you I slept for about ten hours that night. Still tired today, though a reasonably restful morning, and a delightful if brief catchup with oldest (i.e. going back most years) friend N, to whom I was able to present an enigmatically sloshing present, with instructions to keep it in the fridge until Christmas Day).
Mind you, it's freezing enough outside the fridge at present. Yesterday the temperature plummeted, but I still met friend K for lunch and a quick tour around the shops. We stopped back at the Forum (Norwich focal and meeting point) and had a glass of mulled wine. I told K about my weekend dream (literally, a vivid dream - not a conscious aspiration, at least not at first) where I'd set up an internet magazine, a literary magazine entitled 'The Flexible Eye'. We talked in that enthusiastic way one can when fuelled by general seasonal goodwill, not to mention the wine. K is a playwright among other things. We may well set it up. You heard it here first.
I may well need to have something to fall back on. I slept quite well last night but was more aware of Radio 5 live burbling away in the background. So I thought I was dreaming when I first started hearing the news that Peter Mandelson is planning to cut degree time back to two years, along with radical funding cuts for Universities. Bad news. On many counts.
I can't help worrying about my own job - nothing seems particularly safe, particularly if one is working for a 'new' university that has already struggled with financial problems and staff redundancies. But how are students expected to read or otherwise gain enough academic experience, or sufficiently skilled study expertise in two years? In my experience it's often not until the third year that things start to come together for some students. Cut to two years and you may not get to that moment of breakthrough at all. Combine with the illusory idea that HE is about dispensing the correct information rather than stimulating independent thinking and the ability to select and construct an argument or idea: what's going to happen?
Easy to be a prophet of doom I suppose. Study and HE is a changed thing from twenty years ago when I was studying for my own BA. Information is far easier to come by; the skills to process it and respond to it are not. But there will inevitably be change, and good and bad to that change; we will have to see what happens. More online and distance learning I am sure will come about; it's happening already not only with the Open University but also the YouTube Edu channel, the 'open source' educational websites and communities already blossoming.
Swings and roundabouts then? I can't quite go that far.
After our mulled wine, friend K and I were pulled irresistably to the Carousel which had set up stall beside the Forum. A real old fashioned carousel with painted horses. We just had to have a go, bags of last minute Christmas shopping and all. No one saw us - but I'm telling people now I guess... Something quite magical about whirling about in the freezing cold, at the end of the year, the end of the decade, the light fading and my hair moving in the breeze and the momentum of the stately carousel ponies. Swings and roundabouts.
I had one evening out of dinner kindly cooked by married writing friends and made the acquaintance of another lady who used to work for Continuing Ed at UEA, so we had a good spectrum of conversation; I was sorry to have to leave early. Mind you I slept for about ten hours that night. Still tired today, though a reasonably restful morning, and a delightful if brief catchup with oldest (i.e. going back most years) friend N, to whom I was able to present an enigmatically sloshing present, with instructions to keep it in the fridge until Christmas Day).
Mind you, it's freezing enough outside the fridge at present. Yesterday the temperature plummeted, but I still met friend K for lunch and a quick tour around the shops. We stopped back at the Forum (Norwich focal and meeting point) and had a glass of mulled wine. I told K about my weekend dream (literally, a vivid dream - not a conscious aspiration, at least not at first) where I'd set up an internet magazine, a literary magazine entitled 'The Flexible Eye'. We talked in that enthusiastic way one can when fuelled by general seasonal goodwill, not to mention the wine. K is a playwright among other things. We may well set it up. You heard it here first.
I may well need to have something to fall back on. I slept quite well last night but was more aware of Radio 5 live burbling away in the background. So I thought I was dreaming when I first started hearing the news that Peter Mandelson is planning to cut degree time back to two years, along with radical funding cuts for Universities. Bad news. On many counts.
I can't help worrying about my own job - nothing seems particularly safe, particularly if one is working for a 'new' university that has already struggled with financial problems and staff redundancies. But how are students expected to read or otherwise gain enough academic experience, or sufficiently skilled study expertise in two years? In my experience it's often not until the third year that things start to come together for some students. Cut to two years and you may not get to that moment of breakthrough at all. Combine with the illusory idea that HE is about dispensing the correct information rather than stimulating independent thinking and the ability to select and construct an argument or idea: what's going to happen?
Easy to be a prophet of doom I suppose. Study and HE is a changed thing from twenty years ago when I was studying for my own BA. Information is far easier to come by; the skills to process it and respond to it are not. But there will inevitably be change, and good and bad to that change; we will have to see what happens. More online and distance learning I am sure will come about; it's happening already not only with the Open University but also the YouTube Edu channel, the 'open source' educational websites and communities already blossoming.
Swings and roundabouts then? I can't quite go that far.
After our mulled wine, friend K and I were pulled irresistably to the Carousel which had set up stall beside the Forum. A real old fashioned carousel with painted horses. We just had to have a go, bags of last minute Christmas shopping and all. No one saw us - but I'm telling people now I guess... Something quite magical about whirling about in the freezing cold, at the end of the year, the end of the decade, the light fading and my hair moving in the breeze and the momentum of the stately carousel ponies. Swings and roundabouts.
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