Unmanacled

Remembering our first lectures.

At long last! After so many years of service teaching! Of seminar teaching for full-time lecturers. Of the paid-by-the-hour slog.

After so many years of holding ourselves back. Our years of never being allowed to speak – and now being allowed to speak. Our years of never having had the floor – and now having the floor.

Let off the leash. Let loose in an elite university! With elite students! Not the grade-inflated dunces of mass education, as we were. Not the products of the pile ‘em high, cram ‘em in former polys (our background.)

To be listened to! Heard! Wasn’t that what we always wanted? To surface, after years of obscurity. To step up to the podium after years in the darkness.

Unmanacled. Unmuzzled! And with so much say. With all the lessons of darkness. All that we’d brought from obscurity. This was our hour. This was our resurrection. We’d been unburied. Unforgotten. Somehow, we were to come forward to speak. And years of waiting. Years of mental preparation. Just in case. Because it might one day become possible …