Things I will miss about UCT:
2. Winnie's whipless mocha. For the mocha (where would we be without caffeine?), for Winnie - the only person on Campus whose job is to make one's day better, not worse - and for the rare opportunities it affords to connect with people, to engage in intelligent discourse and to spark creativity.
Though, sometimes, Chantel's affogato is a good alternative...
Things I will not miss about UCT:
2. Management. Leadership is in short supply, so UCT compensates with administration. Eight years ago the Shattock Report famously stated that UCT was "over administered and rather seriously under-managed" and characterised by "[an] absence... of comment on academic issues and [a] concentration of concern over the mechanics of the budget process and the interfaces between various parst sof the bureaucracy. The machinery seemed to have become more important than the product." And strategic thinking is stamped out as quickly as it is discovered.
But even on an operational level, things could be better. In 11 years in this position, I have had 13 line managers. Some were good, some truly dismal, others well-meaning but constrained in their ability to fulfill their mandate because of antipathy higher up.
But perhaps the most worrying aspect of this is the celebration and advancement of mediocrity.