HACkers blog

With the last few days slipping into one long tea party, cracks in the universe are starting to appear and some of the deeply hidden weirdness is starting to ooze through.

Like people I've never seen before stopping me to confirm that it's true I'm really, really leaving on Thursday, and telling me how much I've meant to them and how much they'll miss me. And people I've known since pa fell off the bus looking at me oddly when they discover that I'm still here and didn't leave five years ago. 

So, what will I miss about UCT:

• Some really great people I've had the privilege of working alongside. I've been blessed with an awesome team, with a succession of wonderful line managers (direct line managers, that is) in the main, and some truly inspiring colleagues and comrades more broadly who've shaped this experience in ways they'll never fully realise, and would modestly deny anyway.
  

 What I will not miss about UCT:

•  The celebration, systematisation and promotion of mediocrity in a supposed institution of excellence. The thrall which surrounds people beaten with the stupid stick, and the high regard in which the vacuous, opportunistic and downright dumb are held. If someone lacks social skills, writes impenetrably and can't steer a train of thought down a straight track it isn't necessarily a sign of genius: sometimes it's the converse, despite whatever letters someone may have after their name or whatever rank or position they hold.