Reflections upon collective banishment from Arcadia

I would just like to say, as a post script to our Arcadian adventures and perhaps to happily temper the enthusiasm that I splurted in today's lesson regarding our results, that I am delighted with the effort of everybody in the class regardless of marks, grades, assessment objectives etc. We read a difficult play - a highly complex work - and created subtle comparisons with equally challenging works. To have rode the surf, so to speak, and to have come out with a piece of academic criticism of the standard of any of the assignments - and I mean that without qualification - is a sizeable achievement and I implore you all to slap yourselves firmly and squarely on the back with such vigour that you leave an indellible print - so that it may be subsequently revisited like a happier version of Hardy's 'burnt circle' in Where the Picnic Was.

To reduce the discussions, analyses, profound thoughts and personal insights to one of thirty marks seems arbitrary and cruel. What I hope lingers with you (it certainly will with me) is not the quantitative outcome of our endeavours but the free-range discussion of literature and intellectual ideas; the sharing and inheritance of knowledge; the interpretation of the comedic beauty and brutal sensitivity of language.

While the students who achieved the highest grades richly deserved their applause, I would hate to think that those of you who sat in Room 89 mulling over figures which were not as aesthetically pleasing as you would have liked are left feeling in any way despondent. Though we spend only three hours together each week, I spent much time, unbeknownst to you, in your individual company as I feasted on your insights into Arcadia, Wilde, Bronte and your own personal views of art, as I scrutinised your essays. No essay was substandard. No opinion was unfounded. Each piece was a joy to read.

As I intimated when I announced my departure from Norfolk, I shall miss this class profoundly. Sometimes teachers lose touch with why they want to teach, what they enjoy about teaching, even the literature itself. I confess that I have frequently felt this, particularly with some of my classes since I returned to Norfolk. But you lot have been inspirational.

Good luck in the exams.