Our lectures.
At long last! After so many years of service teaching! Of seminar teaching for other people’s lectures. Of paid-by-the-hour teaching. Of holding ourselves back. Of never speaking our own minds. Of never giving our own takes on things. And now …
Our years of never being allowed to speak, and now being allowed to speak. Our sense of never having had the floor, and now having the floor.
Let off the leash. Unmanacled. Muzzles taken off – now what? What were we going to say?
Our lectures.
What happens when the subaltern speaks? When our kind found ourselves at the lectern? When the differend was suspended? When we had people to listen? An audience! For the first time!
What happens when we were allowed to pace the stage? To wield marker pen on whiteboard? To turn on and off the visualiser? To flick from PowerPoint slide to slide? To turn the house lights off and on?
Our lectures.
What now, when been let loose in a Russell group university? With Russell Group students! Who actually showed basic literacy. Who could sit at a desk.
What was to happen now we were to lecture. To profess. We were being trusted with the students of the wealthy. With our positions. Our lectureships. What a marvel!
What could we do? What would we do with our freedom?
Our lectures.
Surfacing. Coming up from our years of obscurity. Stepping into daylight after years in the darkness. Stepping up to the podium.
To be listened to. To be heard. Isn’t this always what we wanted? To put our view of things across. To do it better than the lecturers we’d seen over the years. Than all the lecturers we’d lectured for! That we’d provided seminars for!
Our chance at last: to be in charge of a room of students. To be guiding them, a room of students. To be lifting them up, a room of students.
Our lectures.
Now we had people to listen to us. Students who had to listen to us.
We had an audience. Students were listening. Notetaking!
And Cicero, herself listening. Cicero pacing up and down outside the lecture room, listening in.
Work in Progress 