Employer: The Open University
Job Title: Academic Assistant on the A214 Music summer school
Time Period: July-August ‘08 . Only for a week, though. The work’s sufficiently intensive that they have a policy of not letting you do consecutive weeks unless it’s really necessary. A combination of timings, coincidences and connections meant that Adam, the other me (as it were), was doing all three weeks in a row. But I think that’s only the second time anyone’s ever done that in the history of that course’s summer schools? I arrived a week in and he was already pretty dead!
Location: Durham, England . Hatfield College, to be precise, which was fascinating as despite it being one of the most rumoured-about colleges, I’d never actually been in there, even to the bar. This was the view out of my bedroom window (had to get that in somewhere!):
Description: Helping to run the Music Summer School. As in, keeping the summer school running. If the AAs don’t do their jobs properly, the whole thing collapses. Sounds arrogant, but it’s completely true!
Photocopying, lots! I went in there with a mission to eco-friendly the whole thing up but gave up after a couple of days because it just became too soul-destroying. Not my proudest decision, but I did it to save my sanity.
Resources-organising, – our main task. Scores, CDs, instruments, and music stands were all in our care. Everything had to be signed out meticulously, kept track of, and signed back in by the end of the week. This also involved distributing materials to teaching rooms by way of the pack roll, a less than sturdy companion which resulted in large amounts of Berlioz scores being strewn across the cobbles on more than one occasion. Having a working classical music knowledge wasn’t essential, it turned out, but it was handy to be able to tell straight away that ‘Mendelssohn MND’ meant ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, and when asked for ‘Ave Verum’ string parts that the first place to look was with the Mozart. I only made one bad, bad music joke during the week, which was quite restrained of me I think!
Poster-making, also lots. Adam did an Art Foundation so his posters were veritable works of art. Mine were to the point, clear, and cheerful!
Problem-sorting, – “Do you have the [insert materials here] for the [insert alternative course here]? Why isn’t the ladies’ toilet in M-block working? Do you know how much parking costs up at the cathedral for the day?”
Room-sorting, – key sorting. Be conscious of all keys at all times. Do not leave the Resources Room unlocked under any circumstances. Do not lend out keys to the tutors if it can’t be helped because they’ll probably give them to someone really stupid and then you won’t be able to get in there when you need to. Accept that the projector screen will jam for the guest lecturer, but he really doesn’t seem to care anyway so neither should you.
Tutor-Appeasing, generally with alcohol. The ten tutors and course director between them got through seventeen bottles of wine in one week, and that was just in the pre-meal staff meetings!
Concert-Managing, – my favourite part of the job, probably. Having been in large, large numbers of concerts over the years, it was great to finally be the one in charge of chairs and music stands, organisation and strategy! It all went very smoothly, and it was nice to be able to hear what the students had been working on all week in their ‘Music-Making’ sessions. There were some incredibly talented musicians, but two particular highlights for me were the ‘Hatfield Opera’ who performed two extracts from Bizet’s ‘Carmen’, and also the guitar group (consisting of five classical guitars, one rock guitar, one bouzouki, and one Northumbrium small-piper*) who performed arrangments of Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring‘ and the Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’. These arrangements were both written by Briony, the tutor in charge of guitars for the week, and I think it’s fair to say that they were both the most wonderful and hilarious arrangements of anything that I have heard in a long while!
Faffing. ‘Faff’ was the dirty word of the course in the admin offices. Faff consisted of anything that slowed our jobs down and lessened our efficiency, from indecisive and irrelevant instructions from the course director, to hours wasted in tracking down a CD that finally turned out to have been put in the wrong box, to students who kept turning up with silly requests for scores or photocopying. Faff was unnecessary, and faff was bad. Our aim was to create a faff-free zone, and we printed out posters proclaiming the fact to be stuck on our walls and doors.
Long days, – breakfast from 7:45am. First Resources Room office hour started at 8:30am. We snatched break when we could throughout the day and knocked off at 9:00pm. Six days out of seven. Oh yes!
great people! Wonderful, hilarious, amazing workmates who got lashed at every opportunity – ‘the only people who drink more than the tutors are the support staff’ rang very true, and I spent my day off nursing my first ever proper hangover (having sworn not to touch alcohol all week, due to somewhat lightweight tendencies). But the camaraderie was great, and I reckon that it would have only taken another couple of days for me to start saying “Aye!” and “Nah!” and “yous” and “canny” with the rest of them – as it is my accent has taken on a temporary Geordie lilt, and only partly intentionally! And for all their irritating requests and sponge-like qualities, both the tutors and the students were a great and wonderfully varied bunch of people to work with.
Will I apply again next year? Aye :-)
*presumably counting himself as a guitar because he didn’t know where else to go. I should clarify that his instrument was the Northumbrian small pipes, although it is true that he was also a small Northumbrian piper. If that makes sense?!
Recent Comments