All in a Don's Day

by Mary Beard

  Then, just as I was reflecting gloomily on this subject, I was told that the most recent consultative document for the rules for the REF proposes normally giving women who have had kids no allowance in the evaluation unless they have had more than 14 months’ maternity leave in the 5 years. (For most of us, who can’t afford unpaid maternity leave, that would mean having had 3 kids in 5 years.) The idea is supposed to be that you have your maternity leave and then are back to normal. (An alternative and, in my view, much better suggestion would be to credit women with an output for each baby … so one child born in the period and you would only need 3 outputs, 2 and you would only need 2.)

  This idea of not recognising the research effects of young babies is surely mad. I have tried writing articles with two kids under three. It isn’t about just the official maternity leave. What you need to write good articles and books in my subjects is uninterrupted thinking time. So what blights your productivity for a good while are the trips backward and forwards to feed the baby, the fact that you can’t go to all those seminars you used to go to (people forget about you and what you might be doing) – and you certainly can’t go to conferences (unless you fancy sitting in the bog and expressing the milk for what seems like hours on end, while everyone else is networking).

  If there had been a REF on these terms in the mid-1980s, I would have been a casualty (i.e., I would have been a failure) … and I probably would have left the University and got another job. Twenty years on (and it takes 20 years), I am confident enough to say that that would have been a loss.

  Where are our equal opps people when we need them?

  Comments

  I′m going to get lynched for saying this, but …

  I have two kids aged three and under. I breast-fed them both (still feeding the youngest) up to a year or so. I am a senior academic at a top university in the UK. I took a year off on maternity leave with each. One of them has woken up every 2.5 hours through the night since he was born.

  And I′m scratching my head at what to put in to the REF (my manager has just asked for preliminary suggestions) as I have 14 things which count, and more in the pipeline.

  I planned ahead.

  And quite frankly, I′m narked that my hard work on top of my leave (and difficult pregnancies, births and recovery) isn′t going to be rewarded, and that nothing takes into consideration my high level of high-class output. No, I do not want my input to be reduced to two items! Judge me on my real performance!

  I could do with some sleep, though.

  MONKEYBEAR5000

  What Tony Blair should have written to Saif Gaddafi

  4 September 2011

  According to this morning’s papers, Tony Blair, who had been sent a chunk of Saif Gaddafi’s thesis, wrote back to him thanking him for showing him his ‘interesting thesis’ and giving him a few examples that might help his research (ill-fated research, as it turned out, in more ways than one). This has apparently been revealed in documents that have turned up in Tripoli, and a Blair spokesperson has explained that (although the letter was signed by TB) he hadn’t actually read the thesis and the whole thing had been drafted by ‘officials’.

  Let’s assume two things. One (this is fairly likely): that Saif had written to Blair asking him to read his work and also asking for a bit of help. Two (rather less likely – but you never know): that any graduate student who wrote to Number 10 asking for some help with their thesis would get the backroom boys and girls finding them some good examples for their doctorate.

  On those assumptions, my reaction is that Blair and his team hadn’t learned the lesson that most academics quickly learn, who tend to be deluged with requests by people (from novelists and doctoral students to primary school kids writing a project) asking them to read their work, and/or to give a bibliography, or to ‘tell me what you know about’.

  It’s always a tricky one, but you begin to get a nose for a right answer.

  You are weighing up (in my case at least) two considerations that pull in very different ways. On the one hand, I think that I have a duty to the subject and to helping people find out about it. If a kid who seems to have got enthused about ancient Greece and wants a bit of advice about how to take that further, surely you should help. At the same time, if a Masters or doctoral student at some other university is working on a subject that is part of your ‘territory’, then I think that there is a presumption that you should be interested in them and give a hand (and I think I have a pretty good record at that).

  But if I read everything I was asked to, and gave a full bibliography to everyone who emailed in for one, I wouldn’t have any time for any of my own work at all. And just occasionally I get the feeling that I am being a bit ‘used’ – whether to compensate for someone who is not doing their supervisory job elsewhere (and whose university is taking the fat fee) or to be an innocent weapon in some battle between a student and their long suffering supervisor (‘Mary Beard said …’), or just to save the person’s time of half-an-hour Googling. And sometimes I get the feeling that the innocent inquirer has actually written round to half the Classical world asking for a bibliography on gladiators or whatever. (Those I guess are the ones who can’t be bothered to send an email to thank you, even though they could be bothered to email you to ask you the question.)

  So I have a variety of strategies, while still trying to be helpful. I sometimes ask how many people have they sent the ‘I am doing a project on Roman London … ’ email to. Sometimes I suggest they start with their own teacher, then come to me. Sometimes I ask what they have already done to find out about the subject. This doesn’t work badly, and actually I have made some good friends this way. As I say, you get a nose for it, and for how to help those who need/deserve the help – while not being a complete mug and spending an hour assembling the information that they could have done themselves. The same goes with requests for how to visit Pompeii … it’s great when you have some feedback and people tell you about how it worked (or not); when you give a load of advice about places, sites, transport and hotels, and you don’t even get an acknowledgement, AAGGGHHH.

  So what should Blair have done? Well, my hunch is that he should have written back, suggesting that Saif’s supervisor at LSE was the best resource on this. (He or his staff ought to have wanted to get a scent if there was a problem here – there clearly was.) Anyway, sending off some half-relevant example never really helps anyone; that’s not what a PhD is about really.

  And he (or his staff) should NEVER have sort of implied that he had read the work sent in by Saif when he hadn’t.

  Any academic would have told him that trouble always comes that way – as indeed it has in this case.

  Comments

  I′m pretty sure that the reason he showed it to Blair was that he expected the Prime Minister to call up the LSE and quietly tell them that they′d better give him a PhD or else …

  After all, isn′t that the way things were done in Libya?

  MARKS

  Just as amusing as requests for assistance are supposed answers to long-standing problems, discoveries of the key to the Universe, claims of royal blood and entitlement to the kingdom and so on.

  Littlewood, in A Mathematician′s Miscellany (p. 43 of the 1953 edition), tells the following story:

  Landau kept a printed form for dealing with proofs of Fermat′s last theorem. ′On page blank, lines blank to blank, you will find there is a mistake′. (Finding the mistake fell to the Privat Dozent.)

  RICHARD BARON

  Nisi dominus frustra: why ditch a motto?

  16 September 2011

  Melbourn Village College – not far from Cambridge – has decided to ditch its Latin motto: ‘Nisi dominus frustra’. And I guess you can see why. It’s a contraction of the first line of Psalm 127, ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain’ … so you might translate the three Latin words of the motto something like ‘Without the Lord, frustration’, I guess. A touch pious you might thin
k, and a bit Judaeo-Christian. But I can’t see that any world faith could seriously disagree and, anyway, it’s served the city of Edinburgh well enough for the last few hundred years.

  They have replaced it (after a student vote, it seems) with what sounds to me more like an advertising jingle: ‘Inspiring Minds’ (which is bound to look ‘so 2011’ in a few years time that it too will soon be ditched). According to the Acting Principal, they wanted a motto that was more relevant to the students. In the current economic climate, Latin was ‘largely irrelevant’ in helping the students find work.

  Never mind the dodgy logic and/or facts here. (Every study I have seen suggests that Latin has a rather good track record in employment – but even if it didn’t, we surely don’t think that school is all about jobs: what about EDUCATION?) More to the point is the question of what we think mottoes are for.

  I’ve never been much of a fan of obscuring stupid ideas under a veil of Latin (as if translating stupidity into a ‘dead’ language suddenly made it clever). But I do think mottoes are best when they are a bit mystical, a tiny bit puzzling (which is presumably why Latin mottoes are a favourite of football clubs). I would have thought that enterprising teaching could easily use ‘Nisi dominus frustra’ to make something that was fascinating and life-enhancing for the kids. It would take you, for a start, into the Psalms (which, Judaeo-Christian or not, are an important part of world culture), and it would take you to the history of Edinburgh (which, as a city, wouldn’t be too bad a role model for a school).

  But the real problem is that – to judge from its website – Melbourn Village College doesn’t actually teach Latin, which must be one reason why the students found the phrase irrelevant. (To be fair, they have a good range of Modern Languages and most students study two, at least for a bit; which must make the school a bit of a beacon in that department.)

  I wonder if any of the teachers explained the motto and its history to the kids before they voted to ditch it. And I wonder if the Acting Principal considered the possibility of dealing with the apparent irrelevance by (re-)introducing Latin into the curriculum.

  That might have opened up even more exciting educational horizons to their students.

  Comments

  Once, on an OFSTED inspection, a pupil told me that he hadn′t a clue what the school motto meant and that if they′d wanted him to know they wouldn′t have written it in a foreign language. (It was in Latin.)

  GEOFFREY WALKER

  I must say a motto that suggests you have to believe in the Lord in order for your labours to be fruitful is not a motto I would want for myself or my child′s school. Very depressing if you are not of the tribe.

  STROPPY AUTHOR

  But the motto and the full text it′s extracted from say nothing about believing in the Lord; only about collaborating with Him. A belief in His existence is, of course, implied. But that′s no reason for an atheist to take offence. Each to his own metaphysical assumptions.

  PL

  Our school motto was ′Fidei coticula crux′ (it was run by a Catholic teaching order). But not even the Latin masters knew what it meant. The sticking point was ′coticula′. Someone once suggested that it meant ′touchstone′, which I believe was correct, but as no one knew what a touchstone was, it didn′t help much.

  Now, long after the event, I suppose it means ′The Cross is the test of faith′, which is a good religious motto, but doesn′t seem appropriate to a school that I rather enjoyed than otherwise.

  But what is a motto for? Oxford′s ′Dominus llluminatio mea′ was probably meaningful when invented: ′The Lord enlightens my mind′ or some such; especially if you think of Grosseteste discoursing on light, but nowadays rather begs the question of which Dominus, and whether there is a Dominus at all.

  DAVID KIRWAN

  How about a return ad fontes with:

  (if that′s correct)?

  PL

  Nisi Dominus frustra is the motto of St John′s College, University of Sydney. As acting Rector, after nights of riotous student behaviour, I often fantasised about reducing the motto to FRUSTRA.

  CF

  Filming: the boot on the other foot

  19 September 2011

  When I was curator of the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge, I used to be terribly ambivalent about film crews wanting to come and use the Museum as a location. (It’s a great one, by the way.) On the one hand, it was wonderful publicity for what we had to offer: a free advert, really. On the other, it was always a total pain in the neck. The crew would turn up with mind-boggling amounts of equipment, they completely disrupted the place for any other visitor – and they always, just always, went on for longer than they said they would. I tried adding on penalty payments for every 15 minutes over the agreed time, but even that didn’t work (though it did bring in more cash).

  Now the boot is on the other foot. I’m in Italy filming a documentary series on ancient Rome, and I have become one of those villains I used to find so infuriating – with all that stuff, getting in everyone’s way and sometimes, I confess, going on too long. A salutary lesson, I guess. I have come to see why it is so hard to be a ‘well-behaved’ film crew.

  The timing really is extremely tight and disconcertingly unpredictable. Even if you have recce’d every location pretty carefully, you still can’t be prepared for everything: the fact that it is a rainy day and very dark and you have to light the place, or a man is digging up the road with a pneumatic drill right outside (and it takes half an hour to persuade him just to take a five-minute break), or the air force has chosen to practise its tricks overhead, or your presenter (that’s me) keeps fluffing her lines.

  I don’t really mean ‘lines’, as there is isn’t a written script as such. We know the basic points we want to make at each location, but I do it extempore to camera each time.

  You couldn’t really do otherwise if you want to make it fresh and good and well targeted. Actually being in the place suggests new connections and new emphases in what you should be saying. But it’s horribly easy to get it wrong first time, or even second time … not to say third.

  Sometimes that’s a matter of tone (too breezy, or not breezy enough). Sometimes it’s a question of just getting bogged down in some not very relevant detail – or realising that you just forgot the wonderful example that you meant to put in. Sometimes you have to take 15 minutes to check a fact that you hadn’t realised you needed. I’m travelling with a mini reference library, plus access to JSTOR in the evening – but thank God for Google on a smartphone during the day, which is great when you have had a sudden crisis of confidence about the exact meaning of a Latin word (the brilliant Perseus website gives you Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary on-line) or suddenly blank on the date of the death of Trajan. (No, I don’t trust Wiki!)

  Making a slip in a lecture is bad enough, but you can always put it right the next time – you can even make it slightly endearing on the ‘Homer nods’ principle. If you make an error in front of a few million (let’s hope) viewers, that’s more seriously humiliating, to say the least. (And just think of the number of emails you’d get.)

  So it’s hardly surprising that you tend to run over time. OK, you could just double the time you thought you would need at each location, but that would end you up with big gaps, and wasted time and money … and you’d probably annoy people just as much, for different reasons.

  And it’s hardly surprising that it’s as exhausting as it is adrenalin-generating. We regularly leave the hotel at 7.30 in the morning and get back at 7.30 at night, before a couple of hours final prep for the next day has to be done (by me), and hitches with equipment, locations, permissions sorted out and tomorrow’s shots planned (by the others).

  It all makes me feel a tiny bit guilty about how fierce I was with the hapless, over-running film crews in our Museum.

  Comments

  I′m sure you are doing a brilliant job, but the man with the road drill has my sympathy. When we lived in the Cotswolds
, trying to get on with some forestry, we were interrupted by the Beeb′s natural history unit doing a programme on newts. No prior contact or agreement. We were chain-sawing 300 yards away and suddenly the crew started waving and shouting ′Shhh …′ It was slightly inane.

  PETER WOOD

  As a TV director, I read this with great interest – and Mary′s got the day in the life of a film crew pretty much spot-on. Added to the list of distractions and delays she describes, if you throw into the mix autograph hunters / well-meaning well-wishers / people who absolutely have to wave at the camera (meaning a retake) / a presenter who absolutely has to have their sushi from a certain place the other side of the city and any number of other things that could occur, it′s rare that a day can go exactly to schedule, no matter how well prepared and professional a crew is. (Incidentally – the only people in the country who were happy about the volcanic ash cloud last year were sound recordists; with no planes overhead it was quite incredible how much smoother a day′s filming went!)

  A DIRECTOR

  AD VS. CE

  26 September 2011

  Let’s get this quite straight: the BBC has not banned the use of BC and AD, in favour of the religiously neutral BCE and CE. Though that is what a quick glance at a few of this week’s newspapers would suggest.

  ‘The Corporation has replaced the familiar ‘Anno Domini’ (the year of Our Lord) and ‘Before Christ’ with the obscure terms ‘Common Era’ and ‘Before Common Era’ intoned the Daily Mail, while giving a hearty pat on the back to the almost unknown medieval monk, Dionysius Exiguus (‘Little Dennis’), who invented the BC/AD system. If some people find the BCE/CE terminology a bit obscure, that is nothing compared with the obscurity of Dionysius Exiguus – who has been enjoying a totally unexpected five minutes of fame.