Our lecturers are mysterious individuals. Most of us know very little about them aside from the occasional shared anecdote from their lives beyond teaching. Of course, we know they’re academics, we know they’re especially skilled in what they’re teaching us, but it’s easy to forget that they are learning, researching, and writing while they’re here, too.
For me, the key to falling in love with my course has been engaging with my lecturers as fellow academics, rather than just teachers, and finding out about what they are creating. Seeing lecturers as colleagues could help anyone struggling to connect with their course in the oversaturated scholarly setting of university.
I was recently fortunate enough to attend the launch of a book written by one of my lecturers. Ágnes Lehóczky is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing here at the University of Sheffield. Her latest book, Apropos Paradise Square, was launched at the Creative Masterclass reading event hosted by Professor Harriet Tarlo, who teaches English and Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam.
This event involved Agi’s readings and conversations about the ‘poet’s house’, an idea she is transfixed with. For those of you who don’t take an English degree, or are not naturally inclined to read poetry in your spare time, I realise I am at risk of losing you, but bear with me…
There was a genuine sense of artistic collaboration among those in attendance. Published/unpublished, writer/non-writer status was left outside, and for a few hours, we were all artists here to celebrate the recent success of another.
Following the event, I got the opportunity to interview Ágnes “Agi” Lehóczky on the value she sees in students becoming involved in their degrees/passions in this way:
E: What value do you see in students engaging with their lecturers as fellow academics rather than just teaching figures?
A: The impact is immense: it shifts learning from a one-way transfer to a mutual, collaborative exchange. In creative writing especially, this is vital because the lecturer is a creative practitioner – a fellow writer as much as a lecturer. Viewing lecturers this way fosters open dialogue where everyone genuinely contributes. This peer-to-peer engagement models the respectful, critical community students will join post-graduation.
I have attended a few other events like this before through the Centre for Poetry and Poetics and Creative Writing (CPP), which brings together writers from Sheffield and beyond for events, attended by academics, writers, publishers, students and readers. These events are always so inspiring: learning how published and successful poets have created their works of art allows us to perceive our own creative voice in a real-world academic environment. You see academics with mastered skill and success and realise the only difference between them and you is time and experience. Events like these remind students why they are at university and urge them to continue pursuing their chosen subject with passion.
I also asked Agi how and why she, as the Director of the CCP, thinks students should get involved. She identified the real experience that the centre can provide to students, whether that be editing The Sheffield Review (our student-led creative writing journal) or working with lecturers to organise their own events. “You bring the creative vision; the Centre provides the infrastructure. This is where you transition from being a student of literature to a participant in the literary world,” she said.
This is particularly important in a context where the Creative Arts and Humanities are often considered ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’. The conversations I have had around my degree differ greatly from those that my friends with more ‘employable’ (though who decides this, I’m unsure) interests, with a growing distance between the sciences, the ‘STEM’, and the more ‘creative’ subjects. Whilst I would argue that engaging outside classrooms is restorative regardless of the degree, this surge towards collaboration and support seems to be gaining more momentum in the creative environment, perhaps as a means of combating this risk of extinction.
Apropos Paradise Square made me reflect heavily on these themes. In the book, Agi refers to the idea of the ‘silenced’ writer, forced to write in code and feeling a great frustration to protect our freedom of thought and criticality – principles that are increasingly important in the contemporary world.
E: Do you feel we are at a time in the world now where critical thinking is increasingly threatened? Do you feel that this is a fight that we, as students and artists, fight alongside experienced academics like yourself?
A: The struggle to protect our interior lives and the space for critical thinking is a permanent one, and it manifests in different ways across generations. This isn’t about freedom of speech, but the far more fundamental freedom of thought – our ability to think independently. By recognising duress, and by engaging in open dialogue – both creative and academic – we are already taking action.
It is “action” that underpins much of this argument. As students at university, studying for your degree can at times feel passive. Attending lectures and completing assignments becomes something we do out of obligation; happening to you rather than for you. This is not to say we aren’t interested in our degree: no one would get into student debt to study a subject they didn’t care for. By caring what our lecturers are up to, we can find ways to care about what we are up to – why it matters, why we are here, and what it is that makes us commit to degrees.
Upcoming events from the CPP can be found here.
