I’ve written previously about my quests for a classroom to steal, and my habit of hoarding resources, which I often have difficulty in explaining - such as empty beer cans and several Care Bears. My office for two years has been a very busy pastoral hub / thoroughfare / soup kitchen that has been painted cream, yellow, blue, white, and finally yellow again.

It was a minimalist’s nightmare, a dumping ground for any poster, information sheet or flyer that was delivered to the college, and packed with back-to-back desks that were each piled with paper and whatever else students had delivered to us that day, including lost exercise books, pens without lids, doctor’s notes and other detritus. When we packed it all up the day we closed for lockdown, it filled 10 boxes, three filing cabinets and 24 desk drawers. We packed it up, because we were getting a new office.

The new office is like something out of A Clockwork Orange, all white and clean lines and modular furniture. The seven-strong pastoral team now have an L shaped sofa, and our own kitchen. Not a kitchen for the facilities technicians, the reception staff, the cleaners, the learning support team and literally anyone else who can’t be bothered walking to their own staffroom, but just for us! We each have two computer monitors - and one of us even knows how to work the second monitor. We have floor-to-ceiling windows, and there’s no weird smell in any part of the room - we know because we’ve checked.

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No hiding

It’s not all positive. We are on the ground floor and the front wall is made of glass, as is the front of the building, which means we can be seen from about 50 metres away. No more hiding when one of your Frequent Flyers comes in “just for a chat” because they can apparently hear you bite into a sandwich from any corner of the centre. Also, because we now have the nicest room, we have tourists. Members of staff eyeing up the space, glancing about and saying things like “This would be a nice media staffroom…”

I have also had to say goodbye to a lot of my random crap. Strict rules on Covid transmission means paper-free desks, and no clutter. After a long discussion I managed to negotiate some crap. My cardboard jukebox remains as I posited that students could leave messages in it to avoid the dreaded Post-it overload. (They won’t.) 

I am allowed a small blackboard to post status updates, and a small stationery tidy. I can even have my diary, AKA my “paper brain”, as long as I disinfect it every day. As a result, my desk looks like it was curated by tidying guru Marie Kondo rather than by Stig of the Dump. Science says that geniuses have messy desks, but there’s no room for genius, or just a pile of random rubbish, in the new normal.

Thanks to the extensive remodelling, I have even clocked a possible classroom to steal after my last thieved room was demolished. Beautiful view of the cathedral, light and airy, only one data point so no one wants to use it. All I need to do is make sure there’s a weird smell in there and it could be mine.

Kirsty Walker teaches at a college in the North West of England