This turned out to be the last time I saw Roy. “I have way too much respect for you to have subjected you to them,” he told me. “I’ve also read it”, he added, “which gave me no option but to delete it.” Slack-jawed, I asked him if he had kept a copy. It’s not even in the same galaxy.” I surmised that he had written it, a fact which he confirmed. “Trust me,” he replied with a mirthless laugh, “it’s a world away from perfection. This was a Masters dissertation not his life’s work, I pointed out. By now I had learned the art of gentle remonstration. There was no chance of getting his dissertation completed in time, he told me. Just before Christmas Roy came to see me, unkempt and staring glassily into the middle distance. The official September deadline passed, but Roy’s counsellor helped him stretch it until the following January.Ĭhanging the dimensions of a nose or bust has come to represent the desired yet unattainable hope of a perfect future

At first he refused to engage with it, but he soon realised that it could support his requests for an extension. I directed Roy to the student-counselling service. “I just rub away at the skin when I’m stressed, that’s all.” I then noticed that his nails were bitten past the quick and his fingers had swollen red pads. When he came to see me a week before the deadline for his final dissertation, I spotted an angry rash across his forehead. His work became ever more dazzling and the delays in submission more protracted.

The following year he enrolled on a Masters programme I ran. Roy continued to hand in work late for the remainder of his degree and nonetheless came top of his year by some distance. Despite being docked five points, it still scored a high mark. He implored me for a few more days’ grace I insisted that it wasn’t in my power.

Why then, I asked, hadn’t he submitted it? “Because it’s terrible,” he replied, screwing up his face in agony. Roy said he’d actually already written the piece. He had already demonstrated that he had numerous interesting things to say. I urged him to go home and just write his essay. I explained to him that I couldn’t grant him extra time without a doctor’s note and that he’d lose marks for giving in the work late.

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