I needed to speak urgently to PhD student S. I could see her out of the window from my office in the tower block on campus. I called out to her and she said that she would come up straight away.

What I didn’t anticipate was that she would scale the external brickwork of the building rather than use the internal stairs. This was a brave feat given that she was in crutches only 6 months ago.

This was also an unwise decision on S’s part because it added even more to my hideous workload. Did I really have the requisite carpentry skills to dismantle the window pane from its wooden frame so that S could squeeze her body through the gap once she reached my floor? Why couldn’t she just use the stairs like everyone else?