This post might have ended up on my my Dispirited blog, but there is enough cross-over with recent preoccupations here about grit to persuade me to pop here initially… 

Teaching is a funny thing. Sessions on material you have done many times before, and where you are pretty sure what is going to unfold, can knock you sideways. To mangle Heraclitus, I guess you never teach the same class twice. Today, I dragged myself and some coffee into a 9.15 class on our Love, Sex and Death final year module. They had just submitted their assignment for the module, and it is not the most popular timeslot, so there were a few missing, but enough present for some conversation and discussion.

This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-­expression—and with all this…