Moots, mum and mutts.

As a mature student, teacher, tutor, educator, and mother, I seem to have developed an innate ability to communicate what I believe is important through the medium of life stories. In the classroom, my pupils used to laugh and call it “story time with Mrs D.” As the years went on, I took enormous pleasure in telling those infamous tales of wisdom. Now that become a student myself, I find myself on the receiving end of other people’s stories and lessons, and I’ll admit, it’s hard. Yet today, in the middle of an amazing day of lectures and workshops, two encounters reminded me exactly why I am at university. My first conversation was with G, my co-mooter, fellow French speaker, and beautifully intelligent young woman. She is the same age as my daughter, so I can’t help but feel motherly and protective of her. In truth, she is fierce and strong and needs no one’s wing, But the mother hen in me can’t help herself. We talked about her family and mine. We spoke French, which was a delight. I...

As someone of the older, more well-seasoned kind, I’ve had many interviews in my life. Some good. Some terrible. Some for jobs, some for appraisals, some for medical reviews, and some for employment matters. No matter the context, one question always seems to open the conversation: “Can you tell me about yourself?” It’s astonishing how such a simple question can trigger such a visceral reaction. Perhaps because I am many things, far more than one answer could ever hold. I am my parents’ daughter: the fruit of their marriage and the only child who grew up with no real option but to succeed. I am a wife: loved deeply by a husband who stands beside me through everything, including the emotional thunderstorms of perimenopause. A companion. A confidant. A team. I am a mother: to children who range from adulthood to teenage years to early childhood. I am their home, their comfort, their safe place. I am a curious mind: painted in many colours, creative, musical, imaginative, and endl...