At 3pm I joined a meeting of colleagues in the School of Engineering. I never realised before just how many there were of them: hundreds! When it came to my turn to speak it was hard work to shout above the din, but I eventually got the message out that I was going to give updates on Athena SWAN, and on the PhD students. They gave me enough time to explain that the Athena SWAN submission work was on target – indeed they responded to this news with a loud cheer – and then left the hall in droves. Nobody was interested in the detail of my announcement, nor in the welfare of students at all.

Later that day I saw a few of the same faces when interviewing two applicants for PhD studentships together. The interview was also abandoned. This was largely because both candidates admitted that their first degrees didn’t qualify them for our PhD programme, so left the room half way through the questioning to smoke cigars in the corridor.