Minoan delights

Returning to the office after a period away, usually spent engaged in rather more enjoyable pursuits, is daunting at the best of times; and this year was no exception.  I attended the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, and finished some pressing research in the library of the Warburg Institute in London, sandwiching that delightful meal between 12 days divided among Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam.  And as someone who has spent far too much time in his life suffering a queasy stomach on a heaving Channel ferry or bouncing hovercraft, I must say that the Eurostar train may well be the best thing since the invention of sliced bread.  London to Paris is now a scant 2 hours and 17 minutes, and a very smooth ride to boot.  I wonder if there will ever be the resources and will to do something similar for connections between Ottawa and Toronto?  Definitely not holding my breath on that one!

Probably the worst thing about returning to the office after a lengthy absence is the need to deal with the accumulated mail, now primarily but by no means exclusively of the electronic variety.  There is always a lot that requires some attention, sometimes immediate and sometimes at greater leisure, and memories that need to be dredged up before intelligent answers can be provided to the questions posed.  It is remarkable how much you can forget in the space of 19 days … admittedly 19 very busy days.

But there are also some very pleasant surprises.  I think the nicest this year was a framed copy of a mural from the palace of Knossos on Crete, dating to the middle of the second millennium BCE and hence among the oldest wall paintings in Europe.  The image itself was well known to me, but what made this gift particularly special was the variety of personal comments that had been written around the edges by the student participants in the Greek & Roman Studies course on Greek archaeology, taught on location, so to speak, in May by Susan Downie.  I know from my own personal experience as an undergrad at Carleton of the importance of balancing learning inside and outside the traditional classroom, and thus have been encouraging proposals for spring session courses to be taught at locations other than Ottawa.  And this year we had four, including the second one in Greece.  And all seem to have been enormously successful, and to have produced indelible memories that will no doubt last a lifetime.  More importantly in the short term, those students who participated in these life-changing experiences will return with new enthusiasm for their classroom studies in the coming winter. 

The poster will assuredly find a place somewhere on my wall, and I shall re-read the comments on those days when I feel utterly discouraged about the state of education, and especially post-secondary education, in this country.  One student wrote: “You have no idea how much it was worth it!”.  Well, actually, I think I do.  But there is another whose words will probably bring the biggest smile to my face when things get grim: “Rome 2013?”