Atonement

Marking is one of those funny experiences where idealism clashes jarringly with pragmatism, leading to a hastily arranged vacation where they both go scuba diving and leave you utterly rudderless. As the hours wear on a strange haze descends over your vision and you start getting 'out of pie' errors, your toy giraffe starts talking back and your attendants start getting that funny look in their eyes. Enough of the wonderful beastliness of marking though. That can only be boring for the un-initiated, those who don't know the horror of looking down at a complete mess and knowing they'll have to at least try to understand it before just whooshing through it all with a vague ambition to do good and a dread of what is to come.

It can be all too easily to feel rudderless. Sudden changes and unfortunate events can overload our abilities to be in control of our directions as we struggle to reorient. My time is spent almost entirely on trying to set a direction as the whirlpool of duties spins around and around, wreaking havoc wherever it goes. I've had a new duty for a few weeks: The organising of a careers event for final year undergraduates in the department, and that organisation has been perverse in its progress. I think careers events are a means of atoning for past sins. I meant to do something on the word atonement but never got to it. And still my spin continues, a tumble from job to job to job...

Atonement: the act of atoning for sin or wrongdoing

Atonement seems to be something that has fallen out of fashion, except in the strictest religious sense of the word. When was the last time you atoned for something you did wrong? As someone who isn't functionally perfect my actions comprise numerous and often quite funny mistakes, but sometimes they do hurt people and so one has to atone. For the most part that just means saying sorry but sometimes it means more. Last week I did upset someone with a flippant, glib and stupid remark and then went away cursing myself. And then I cursed even more as I realised I was cursing my own imperfection rather than the effect on the student. Isn't that selfish? No, let's not be angry at letting ourselves down rather than causing hurt to someone else, but go the more humanistic way. And let's say sorry and that we were wrong and do the right thing.

'The West Wing' - excellent series in its first four seasons - had a major problem in its third season. President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis was revealed to the nation. Its concealment had been an awkward character moment whenever it was raised as it essentially didn't work with Bartlet's persona at all. It was an artificially imposed 'feet of clay' and the third season had a massive problem as the concealment and lack of subsequent repentance made his character essentially unlikeable, until he finally said 'sorry' and took the consequences. The show's fabric snapped back into place as if it hadn't ever been perturbed to begin with, and continued until another more organic tension was put into place with the good president. The point? Well, things feel better when you make up for your mistakes rather than make them over to look like successes.

O.


PS Patronising? It has crossed my mind, yes.