Newsletter 2015

Well we’re well into the new semester now at the University of Salford. The students are now into a routine and are sharing their work quite freely. They learn from each other. Often they’ll learn even more by looking at others’ work than they do by just looking at their own.
I’m busy preparing new lectures and updating ones I’ve delivered before. It’s great when the students come to the seminars having read the suggested material. It makes for some really interesting discussions.     
I am just about keeping up with my writing though I don’t manage my two hours / 2000 words every day. I look forward to when I retire when I shall be up to four hours a day and 3000 words. So, not really retirement but yet another career change, actually.  
I shall miss that interaction with my students, however.   

Newsletter January 2015

2015 has got off to a good start now. I’m coming to the end of huge marking load at the University of Salford. I have had to mark 44 scripts on my own module, two dissertations, and co-mark 60 on another module. Yet to come are eight MA assignments.  In addition I’ve had to moderate 40 scripts. That’s 308,000 words to read and comment on. I’ve written already about 10,000 in comments.

Next week lectures begin. I’m looking forward to that though there is always the slight worry on the first session that you may go to the wrong room and find either no students or a bunch of people you don’t know.

Oh, mind, no pressure by the way: I’m lecturing on writing autobiography on Tuesday. We use Jackie Kay’s Red Dust Road. Jackie Kay is our new chancellor. Oh hum!                                 
Still writing remains the priority: I must put in that 2,000 words  / two hours a day even if I have to work late into the night to get the other things done. I must be able to say “I am a writer, therefore I write.”