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1. The latest book manuscript disappears. It¡¯s almost done and it would be unbearable to lose it. I can¡¯t even comprehend coming back from the?loss, having to rewrite it all. But it won¡¯t happen. It?really won¡¯t. No, really. I have multiple copies, the publishers have a first version, as do reviewers, it¡¯s in the cloud, it¡¯s on my back-up drive, etc, etc. Still, I worry.

2. My reference library disappears. One day I wake up and it doesn¡¯t work any more. Oh hang on, that?has?happened. That¡¯s when the various platform developers don¡¯t talk to each other¡­the new version of Word doesn¡¯t talk to the bibliographic software, and the helpline just says ¡°yes¡± and the website says don¡¯t trash your old copy of Word?because you¡¯ll need it for a while as we sort out our?new compatible version¡­.Yeah, right. As it happens, I didn¡¯t trash the old version because I¡¯m suspicious of all of you. The lot of you, every last one.

3. I lose the thesis I am examining. Well, it¡¯s never happened, but it could. Really, it could. And I would look ¨C and I would be ¨C so unbelievably stupid going back to the university (and to the doctoral researcher) saying that I can¡¯t find the big book any more. Hardly a vote of confidence in your examiner, is it? But I guess that they¡¯d replace it and what I¡¯d really lose is face.

4. I forget to turn up for a viva. I¡¯ve switched my diary?entirely over to digital, and it?regularly seems to lose things and to get confused across different time zones. I¡¯m still recovering appointments from the invisible early hours of the next day, a legacy of when I was away at?New Year in Australia. I can live with missing meetings and messy appointments, and I¡¯ve got used to fessing up to having not managed conflicting appointments as well as I might. But it would be unthinkable ¨C no, the trouble is that it¡¯s entirely thinkable ¨C to manage to miss a viva.

5. One of those emails offering me millions of pounds from a distant dead relative, those emails that I just trash as soon as I see them, is actually true. One of those emails telling me to change my password and check my balance because I have weird new transactions is true. One of those emails telling me to change my email password in 10 days is true. Oh hang on, it was. I¡¯ve been locked out of my email once before because I didn¡¯t recognise the difference between the real IT and the fake. Well, they look so similar, anyone could do it. It took a long wait and then a phone call to get it back, but I¡¯d rather it didn¡¯t happen again. But how to know which of the multiple scams might just be the real one?

Really? Not afraid, eh?

Oh well then ¨C just call me paranoid.

Pat Thomson is professor of education at the University of Nottingham.?This post originally?.