This week, each of the three blog posts is about a lecturer from one of my three years at Bath Spa University. So, today I’ll write about one from the third year, Monday was one from first year and Wednesday was one from second year. Each of them has had a significant influence on me and my work and so I just wanted to dedicate a post to each of them. Today’s will be on somebody named Colin Edwards.
Despite being the person I’m writing about from third year, Colin was actually the very first member of the Creative Writing staff that I ever spoke to. Before I properly started, there was an induction week and during that Colin gave a lecture. Based on a prompt he gave, I wrote a short poem about missing my friends from The Corsham School, but also how I was happy to have made new friends. I can’t remember what was said, and I’m sure he probably can’t remember, but I had a short chat with him about something after the lecture was over. Curiously, it seems he may also turn out to be the last lecturer I speak to as well (albeit via email).
Anyway, first and second year went by and I had heard positive Colin stories from my friends before having him assigned as my guiding tutor for my Creative Enterprise project. For that project I was polishing up my Finger Puppet Show webcomic, taking steps to make it more professional and so on. I have to admit, I was kind of in two minds about it: on the one hand, I have fun making it and had lots of ideas for it too, on the other, I thought, maybe it was too silly. Perhaps I should be focusing more on serious writing like short stories and novels (which I still work on, but of course, a degree of my creative energy has to go into the webcomic) and I wondered if Colin, as an English Literature professor, might feel the same. But, on the contrary, Colin loved it. His comments were extremely encouraging, and he especially enjoyed the ones that tackled social issues, which has then spurred me to think of several more storylines that cover those topics.
I have to admit, as he didn’t teach a class of mine, I didn’t see that much of him, instead I just had a few one on one meet ups. But even from them I was still left with a very good impression because Colin is such a nice and pleasant man, that his feedback was always eagerly awaited. I remember I’d often look forward to our meetings. I remember he said to me once too “There’s something about you. You’re just so incredible sane” and I thought that was very nice. The Creative Enterprise was one of my biggest projects for third year and I certainly couldn’t have asked for a better guiding tutor than Colin.
(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)
