8.30 am: Off to School for the final day of assessments. 9.00 am: Today, we reached the third year of undergraduate painting. An altogether different sense of urgency pervades the assessment discussions. The students have under four month in which to produce the most resolved, professional, and impressive body of artwork of their entire lives … and then go public for the first time. Therefore, straight talking and clear sightedness were the call of the day:

On the whole, the portfolios presented were encouraging and bode well for the coming degree show. Occasionally, we witnessed quite extraordinary endeavour. At such times the work transcended its identity as module submission; we were, instead, discussing art and responding to it as such. After over five hours of continuous assessment (an experience which gives a whole new meaning to the term), we were done (in every sense of that word). All that remained was for the principal assessors to commit their feedback reports to paper. Hybrid ‘selfie’:

2.20 pm: Following a hasty sandwich and catch up with the world’s news, I sat down, at home, to articulate Dr Forster’s and my judgements on those who I’d taught. I ended my final report with the encouragement: ‘Be aware; be cautious; be ambitious; be brave’.

4.45 pm: Emails had begun to accrue in my inbox and lists ‘must do now’ items, on my desk notebook. I get vaguely anxious when there are more than half-a-dozen unattended emails threatening for attention.

7.30 pm: I allocated the evening and tomorrow morning to put to rout tasks that were progressively descending my maxi-size Post-its. My calendar began to fill like a kettle. Ah! The simple pleasure of scoring through an item once it has been attended to. 8.30 pm: A little soldering, to break the routine and monoralize a stereo-jack plug. 9.00 pm: A distribution of certain assessment feedback forms and a culling of my inbox.