Time is a strange dimension. Academic years are a strange dimension. Seasons are strange dimensions.
Even when I was a spotty faced youth attending Grammar school back in the 60’s and early 70’s the Autumn term (we had terms in those days) always seemed the longest and after the New Year everything ran downhill rather rapidly, usually towards some examinations or other such test. Was it a case of body clocks and lengthening evenings and nights that made those terms so long and so productive? Little has changed. Last semester, there, I have used that alien phrase again, seemed impossibly short but crammed full of activities and product delivery that came crashing to a halt a month ago and then everything seemed to fizzle out on campus but not here. I have been juggling degree project shooting and processing, research, website re-building, and client work, plus re-engaging with my dissertation writing.
It seems like I am now on the Cresta run. The last month has seen me sprinting alongside the academic bobsleighs, yes, there are than one, trying to decide which one to jump on. We all know that we have different deadlines for product delivery and managing all these is all enveloping and utterly draining. Having set up a good exhibition space in the Atrium for the Lux Locus interim degree show we now find we are using a different space, in fact two different spaces for the actual degree show. If only we had been consulted on this change. Aspects of taking a degree course as a mature student are testing at times, especially when a previous career (still current) embodies agile project management. On top of the academic deliverables we now have to kick start the fundraising that is so necessary to deliver our exhibitions in Ipswich and London. I almost feel like that has taken a holiday over the past month when it should have been thumping away like a heart under race conditions.
Yes, we are all on whatever bobsleigh we have jumped on and are rapidly facing the many finish lines. How many times will we fall off on the way down I wonder only to trudge back up the hill and pick another bob or indeed another team?