Adventures with the Wife in Space by Neil Perryman

Author:Neil Perryman [Perryman, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2013-01-13T11:00:00+00:00

Between 1993 and 1999 I screened Jaws to my students so many times I wore the tape out and the university had to buy me a new one. I discovered I loved teaching, and not just because I got to watch Jaws a lot; it felt like I’d accidentally stumbled into a vocation.

By rights, I should have been a terrible teacher. I wasn’t really a ‘people person’ and I found students irritating even when I was one myself. But I worked hard to compensate for my lack of experience and, with lots of help from Sue, I got quite good at it. Teaching is part knowledge transfer, part performance art; what I lacked in the former, I made up for in the latter. In 1997, despite breaking down in tears during the interview because I so desperately wanted it to go well, I was made a full-time member of staff.

One of my responsibilities as a full-time university lecturer was that I had to be ‘research active’. This basically meant I was expected to commit to a PhD immediately. So the first thing I had to decide was what subject I was going to study in depth. I cast around for an alternative to Jaws, about which I knew an awful lot. Naturally, there was only one.

I can still remember Sue’s first words after I told her I planned to take a PhD in Doctor Who – her first words after she stopped laughing, anyway.

Sue: I tell you what, Neil, it’ll be worth five years of hard work just so you can tell people at dinner parties you’re a Doctor in Doctor Who.

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