A Don’s Life

Graduation: no animals killed

Our students graduated on Saturday. In Cambridge graduation lasts three days, from Thursday till Saturday. They go to pick up their degrees by college, in order of the date of foundation of the college (which means that Newnham in 1871 comes at the beginning of the last day).

I never go to the ceremony itself. In fact I have never been to a graduation ceremony at all, not even my own -- for any of my degrees (I just got the certificate through the post, in absentia as we say). When I was first graduating with my BA, I just couldn't face all the rituals -- the dressing up in the fur-lined hood, the clasping the fingers of the "praelector", the Latin and the hand-clasping with the vice-chancellor (or the vc's deputy -- the top-dog understandably doesn't sit in the senate house for three days presiding over this).

I also couldn't face organising the whole show for a pair of divorced parents (they werent technically divorced, as it turned out -- my Dad had lost interest in the whole proceedings after the decree nisi and had never bothered to apply for the decree absolute, despite reminders from his solicitors. . . . but they were divorced in spirit). I told both of them a real whopper: graduation wasn't any longer what most people did, it was just for the blazer brigade.

It is now one of my biggest regrets. At the cost of a little embarrassment to MB and some deft negotiation of parental squabbling, I could have given them a really proud and memorable day. So now when any student says to me that they don't fancy it, I try my hardest to persuade them to go through with it.

And I always try to go to the party that Newnham lays on for every one after the ceremony itself.

Any Questions in Birmingham

I went to do "Any Questions" in Birmingham this evening, at Lordswood School. This is the third time that I've done this -- and it has all the pleasures and terrors and adrenaline of an exam (which is no doubt why I enjoy it so much): you have to question-spot, revise hard, and then go for it when the hoped for question arrives on your plate. I cant tell you how many hours I had spent this morning going through a) the career of Michael Jackson, and b) the expenses claims of BBC executives (my conclusion being that, plus or minus a couple of rocky judgment calls, these were pretty austere).

This evening was a particularly nice occasion. For a start I was met, when we got to the school, by an excellent girl who was hoping to come to Newnham next year -- and was very keen on the college. But next, the questions and answers raised all kinds of issues.

The other panellists were Max Hastings, Hilary Benn and Theresa May. And the first question was indeed about Michael Jackson.

The plain man's guide to alphabetical marking

The exam season is ending. Our Classics Part II results came out on Monday (of the six Newnham students, two got Firsts and four got  2.1s -- well done, ladies!). The final meeting for Part 1B happened yesterday, and the Part 1A and Prelims examiners meet today to agree their final grades.

The main job at these meetings is to go through all marks scored by each individual candidate and to assign a "class" to their performance: at the top are the "firsts", then the 2.1s, then the 2.2s, then, at the bottom but still passing, the thirds. (Actually in Part 1A, which is taken by most students at the end of their first year, we don't divide the second class into 2.1s and 2.2s -- it's just firsts, seconds and thirds, if you follow me.)

Each examiner gets a mark book, containing all the marks of all the candidates (known by number not by name -- this is all anonymous), ranked in order of achievement, and we go through the candidates one by one, looking carefully not only at the total number of marks they got, but also at their "profile". So for example a candidate might not have quite enough marks in numerical total - notionally 60% -  to get a 2.1; but of their six papers, 4 might be at 2.1 level with the total brought down by a couple of 2.2 marks . . . That would still get a 2.1. It all takes a long time. Yesterday we took all morning to class about 90 candidates.

To the outsider, the mark books would look like incomprehensible gibberish. Not only does each candidate have three marks for each paper -- and independent one from each of two examiners, but also an" agreed mark" assigned after they have met to discuss the different assessments and possibly revisit the paper. But in addition, each independent mark is given in two forms: in numbers and letters (a series of Greek letters from alpha to delta, with a variety of modifiers, pluses, minuses and question marks. For example, "68: b + +/ a - -" or "63: b+?+" or "51: b - - -" or (lets go up) "80: a ?+"

What's the point.

Demolishing part of the Darwin legacy

Cambridge colleges are not always the best custodians of their heritage. Despite being filled with a load of individual aesthetes, conservationists, environmentalists and historians, as institutions they can make pretty dreadful decisions. Not that they break the law or anything like that (or simply flout the local planning department -- though I'm sure that that was what happened 50 years ago). It's more that -- rather like MPs -- you have come to expect better standards from these guys than from the rest of the world.

Sadly, they dont live up to that expectation. King's College was outed a few years ago for flogging off a couple of large Gilbert Scott candlesticks from their chapel at Willingham Auctions -- a not infrequent destination, as any Willingham Auction goer will know, for surplus to requirements college Victoriana.

Anyway now Murray Edwards College ("New Hall" to most of the world) is about to get rid of a little lodge, around a hundred years old, that went with The Grove -- now part of Fitzwilliam, but once the house that Emma Darwin lived in after husband Charles died.

The new Acropolis Museum -- a glimpse at the opening party (and of the opening speeches)

Well, to be more accurate, a glimpse from ONE of the opening parties. The big one, for heads of state and celebrities, is on 20 June. I was extremely pleased to be invited to tonight's party, on 18 June -- which gathered together a motley crew of academics, 'restitution campaigners' and other Hellenists, of all persuasions.

I had had a preview of the new Museum a year ago. And the finished product I saw this evening was as good as it promised to be.The outside is the worst feature: it looks rather like an up-market multi-storey car park, dominating an otherwise fairly low level area of Athens (the picture is the view of it from my hotel roof). Inside it is stunning. Not only the fantastic views up to the Acropolis itself, but also down to the 'ground beneath our feet'. The whole museum is built over excavations of classical Greek and Roman settlement -- and you can see these through the glass floors from the very top floor of the building. (Not great for those with vertigo.)

The collection is of course stunning too. Never mind the Parthenon, there are the most wonderful statues of the archaic, pre-classical period. Anthony Snodgrass (who was also there) pointed out to me a marvellous twisting, turning late sixth-century sculpture -- much more striking than the better known, sultry Kritios Boy. And I was very taken by the series of sculptures of scribes, a nice symbol of the literacy of early Greece. And at the other end of the chronological spectrum, you are greeted as you come into the museum by two wonderful Roman terra cotta sculptures of "victories" (Nikai).

But what of the politics? And of the inaugural speech of the minister of culture, Antonis Samaras?

How do examiners mark exams?

I wouldn't want to claim that exams are as bad for the markers as they are for the sitters. But the Cambridge Tripos is still a big investment of time and hard work for the dons. It's not just that you have to read each paper carefully (and I have spent more or less the whole of the last week on this, more than 12 hours a day). You have also to decide what principle of marking to adopt.

Put simply, if you are dealing with standard "essay" papers, you can either go question by question (that is mark all the answers to question one, then all the answers to question two and so on) -- or you can go candidate by candidate (that is, mark all the answers from candidate a, then move on to candidate b and so on).

The advantage of the former is that you can compare the answers more directly and see more easily which candidates have got new or more interesting material.

About 20 years ago I was marking a set of ancient history scripts in which the first candidate I marked referred to an anecdote about the fruit trees of the Athenian fifth-century politician, Cimon. I was impressed. But when I discovered that at least 20 of the first 30 candidates had the same anecdote, I realised that it must have been banged on about in lectures.

The advantage of the candidate by candidate approach is that you can see the profile of an individual student's answer much more easily.

Over the years, I've developed a (time-consuming) compromise between the two. A rod for my own back, but fair to the students I think.

Exam nightmares

 I have a new exam nightmare. For the last thirty-five years I've woken up every few weeks with the same old nightmare: I've just gone into the exam room and it's the wrong paper on the desk, or I've revised for the wrong paper, or the whole thing is written in some language I don't understand.

Anyway, I now have a new real life nightmare. I don't get to the exam room to start the exam.

The Cambridge system is that one examiner from every "board" turns up at every room in which one of their papers is to be sat -- in case a student has a question, or has spotted a mistake, or whatever.  Anyway I was down to turn up at the Corn Exchange on Monday morning, nine o'clock, to be there for the first thirty minutes of the Part Ib Ancient History paper.

The truth is that I completely forgot.

"Pompeii" wins the Wolfson History Prize

Almost three months ago I got a letter saying that my Pompeii had won one of the Wolfson History Prizes for 2008 (and very handsome in financial terms it is too). And, so the letter went on, I was to keep this absolutely quiet till 9 June. This has been one of the most difficult secrets I have kept in my life. You cant imagine how I've wanted to spill the beans. But, terrified at the idea of the prize being removed for bad behaviour, I have kept absolutely quiet.

This hasn't made life easy. I gave a short list of those that I would like to invite to the ceremony, but I didn't dare tell them why. So in the event not many could go. All the same, lots of friends were -- as it happens -- there at the prize giving at Claridges this evening.

Simon Cowell for Minister of Culture?

I'm beginning to miss Jacqui Smith already. She was a terribly narrow-minded, not to say repressive, Home Secretary and didn't come over as wholly honorable in the expenses row.

That said, I wasn't at all clear that we had got to the bottom of the adult movie row. Ever since someone sowed this shadow of doubt in my mind (sorry I cant remember who it was . . .), I have wondered if it really was Mr Jacqui Smith who watched them. Could it not have been the Smith children? I accept that there is not a jot of direct evidence for this -- but if it HAD been the kids who had ordered the smut, what would the Smiths have done? Obviously, they would have got Dad to take the blame, rather than have the media decide to take pot shots at the adolescents. Maybe Mr Smith is a self-sacrificing hero, not a late night porn watcher.

But whatever the rights and wrongs, Jacqui Smith was at least an elected member of parliament.

Spirit of Play: will the TLS band get to number one?

It must be more than two decades since I have been to a gig. In fact, even in my mis-spent youth I wasn't much of a gig-goer, being more of a library girl. But last night I was at the Dublin Castle in Camden Town enjoying the bands, along with an audience that included rather more literary types and professors than you usually find at such occasions.

What had brought us there?

One of the inaugural gigs of the TLS band, "Spirit of Play".