Campus confidential: My first week as a professor

Our new mystery columnist is a freelance journalist as well as the author of several novels, none of which have sold quite as well as he hoped. Now, in the hope of paying the rent until his  agent can sell his latest masterpiece, he has taken up a new position: lecturer at a prestigious University…

Nine o’clock, Monday morning, and I am quite undone. Faced with a two-hour lecture, on a subject about which my knowledge is less than total, my only prop – my Power Point presentation – is playing up. I look around at the serried ranks of eager young faces, all determined to get their money’s worth for the big fat fee they’ll be paying until the year 2058, beads of sweat appearing on my brow: without Power Point I’m finished.

Now I recall the advice given by my new boss: “don’t let them see the fear in your eyes.” I thought she was joking.

“I never wanted to be a lecturer!” I want to sob, falling to my knees and crying for mercy – “I just want to write. The fact my agent is unable to sell my new novel is all his fault, and so we’re stuck here, in this sweaty lecture room, for two hours every Monday morning for the next twelve weeks, so get used to it, and stop looking at me like that, and-“

“Hi,” says a fellow lecturer, whose position I have taken, and who has agreed to hold my hand while I work out exactly what it is that lecturers do. “Everything all right? Need a hand?”

“Um – please.”

Somehow, with the help of my saviour, I get through the first lecture; throughout I examine the student’s faces for signs of mirth, or disbelief, but the default expression appears to be apathy. I can handle apathy: I’m a father myself. Elated by my great success, I explain to my baby-sitter (who is least a decade younger than I am) that I have no further need of her; I will face the next class alone.

The day’s second lecture is in another part of this drab, scrofulous city: I am almost late. Worse, another class has yet to finish so I can’t even go in and prepare: instead I sit on a small sofa outside with my new students, unsure whether to introduce myself.

I say nothing. We get inside and I hold up the unit handbook.

“Right,” I smile, “I’m assuming you’ve all seen this?”

That same glazed expression, a sullen shake of heads; one girl seems positively malevolent, as if we’ve met before; bearing in mind our comparative ages, this is thankfully impossible. Sweating again I try to retrieve a version of the handbook: the wretched machine won’t recognise PDFs, there is no internet connection from which to retrieve the original, and I’m reduced to leafing through the pages to my disbelieving group.

After class, I take a bus back through the desolate streets to my budget hotel. It’s too far to commute home to my wife and kids so each Monday I am reduced to this: to wandering the streets in search of a kebab, or eating fajita wraps in a bar whose theme appears to be “chemists”. Ordering a pint I’m surprised to discover that the barmaid has stolen my newspaper; waiting for my meal another barmaid comes across and snatches away my cutlery.

Apart from that, the motel’s great: for a modest fee of £10 you can have unsecured access to the internet, which means your homepage is instantly changed without warning, everyone in the hotel is free to hitch a lift on your connection, and the really important stuff – getting work emails, checking your accounts – becomes a pop-up feeding frenzy.

The next day’s lectures are marginally better; I actually have one group eating out of my hand, mainly thanks to the zappy new graphics I stuck on my presentation at five o’clock this morning. Sadly, just as the class is really beginning to rock there is a fire drill; in the rush to leave the room, my flash drive falls apart in my hands.

That afternoon, as I’m leaving my final lecture, wondering if my heart is really in it, this new profession (for that’s what this is – not an extension, or an addition to my writing, but a whole new world), I find one of the students has waited behind to seek my advice about something; actually seems keen to hear my opinion and to bear it in mind.

So if I do go back next week – blame him.

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