Life for the composer during this time was often difficult. Teaching posts were generally badly paid, while the shortage economy made manuscript paper at times difficult and expensive to acquire. With no access to radio, Górecki kept up to date with music by weekly purchases of such periodicals as "Ruch muzyczny" (Musical Movement) and "Muzyka", and by purchasing at least one score a week. Górecki continued his formal study of music at the Academy of Music in Katowice, where he studied under the composer Bolesław Szabelski, a former student of the renowned composer Karol Szymanowski. As Górecki was later to follow, Szabelski drew much of his inspiration from Polish highland folklore. Szabelski encouraged his pupil's growing confidence and independence by giving him considerable space in which to develop his own ideas and projects, so that several of early pieces Górecki wrote were straightforward in the type of neo-classicism, during a period when Górecki was also absorbing the techniques of twelve-tone serialism. He graduated from the Academy with honours in 1960. In 1975, Górecki was promoted to Professor of Composition at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice, where his students included Eugeniusz Knapik, Andrzej Krzanowski, Rafał Augustyn and his son, Mikołaj. Around this time, Górecki came to believe the Polish Communist authorities were interfering too much in the activities of the academy, and described them as "little dogs always yapping". As a senior administrator but not a member of the Party, he was in almost perpetual conflict with the authorities in his efforts to protect his school, staff and students from undue political influence. In 1979, he resigned from his post in protest at the government's refusal to allow Pope John Paul II to visit Katowice and formed a local branch of the "Catholic Intellectuals Club"; an organisation devoted to the struggle against the Communist Party. He remained politically active through the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1981, he composed his "Miserere" for a large choir in remembrance of police violence against the Solidarity movement. In 1987, he composed "Totus Tuus" for the visit of Pope John Paul II to Poland. Górecki's music covers a variety of styles, but tends towards relative harmonic and rhythmical simplicity. He is considered to be a founder of the so-called "New Polish School".