It was weird actually, seeing James again after all these years. He seemed to have shrunk - I'm about his height, which I'd never noticed before. But I suppose you mostly only really see tutors sitting down. He'd always been ever so nice, but now actually seemed quite meek, in fact really quite shy, and didn't eat lunch due to nerves, as we were presenting first thing after lunch. I wish I hadn't eaten lunch but only because the game pie I ordered was absolutely terrible, took too long to arrive and turned up with chips not the mash I'd ordered. Rubbish. But anyway, I suppose it was weird just seeing him as a person rather than a teacher. He told me he still dines out on an excuse I once gave for not turning up to a tutorial (someone who was stalking me was threatening to throw himself off Carfax Tower. Which was a half-truth.) and it was strange to think that just as we tell tales of all the fabulous, horrible, eccentric or otherwise memorable tutors we've had, they of course do exactly the same thing to us, discussing which students were frustrating, or brilliant, or amusing, or in this case, came up with wild excuses.

I came away throughly glad I didn't go into academia, based on the people who were there (which was useful, as I've always wondered before). Not horrible people, just so buried in these obscure passages of knowledge, devoting all their time to a dead poet, working on books that will only be read and understood by a handful of people. Exclusive for the reason that it's actually quite dull. I basically write to communicate (and get free stuff), and hopefully either inform or entertain a reasonably wide readership, and therefore try to put things as clearly as possible, without dumbing down. Academia (arts academia at least) seems to be all about burying your argument as deep as possible in clause, sub-clause, reference and foot-note, as if, because that's the opposite of how dumbing down works, that must make them smarter. Yes, sub-clauses, foot-notes and all the rest are useful when your ideas need them in order to be fully expressed, but by themselves, mean nothing. They should be an integral and essential part of expressing your argument in all its subtlety, not used as a kind of would-be intellectual salad dressing, a stylistic convention, which I think I saw too much of on Saturday. All complex arts papers have their simple elements (one would hope), yet too many are expressed throughout in the style only actually needed for the more rarefied aspects, with no choices made as to which mode might be more appropriate.

Anyway. None of my inner railing against academic rot prevented me from feeling totally inferior afterwards when various emeritus brayne-king doo-dah doctors of Wisdom & Learning kept coming up and asking where I'd done my phd and I had to tell them "er, sorry, I only have a BA..." Then then gave me a look like I was some particularly weird specimen encountered under a microscope. "A journalist? Presenting a paper on Milton? Whatever next." Though this did not stop them from agreeing with the paper, which is something I suppose.