Working in a University, today is the day that we properly make the pivot from one academic year to the next. Usually things don’t line up quite so nicely but this year, today, I have attended the Awards Ceremony for our graduating students (who mostly started in September 2014) this morning and then this afternoon I have met our new First Year undergraduate students and taken a large group of them around the campus for a tour. So, on the very day that we wave goodbye to one group we say welcome to another. It has been a really strong marker of the regular annual rhythm of my work. It has also been a very odd day because it is one of the very few days on which I have put on a suit. This drew comment from colleagues who, ironically, were also unusually smartly attired that I ‘looked very smart’, that they didn’t recognize me and, in one case, that ‘it makes you look like a Headmaster’. I can cope with the former comments; I am not at all sure what to make of the latter one!
As I reflect on this example of ‘out with the old and in with the new’, and given that my field of work is marine science, I am drawn to thinking of today’s changes as being like waves rolling in towards the shore. As one wave breaks a new wave travels into the surf zone and shoals (grows) rapidly on its way shore wards. At any time there are then a couple of waves in between, one almost at the point of breaking and one a bit further out towards the edge of the surf zone growing all the time (mostly our courses are three years long). Student cohorts as surf zone waves? I think maybe it has been a long and tiring day…
Tim O'Hare 