I do appreciate how welcome the end of the semester is, but the blogosphere-wide enjoyment of my semesterised north American colleagues is definitely enhancing my grumpiness. I have four full weeks to go before I am 'free' (quotation marks since my summer is almost entirely full of fieldwork, conferences, 'service' in the form of supervising High School kids having a 'science experience' and paperwork, and I just heard this morning that I do NOT have permission to miss the mandatory pre-semester meeting in September even though it falls in the only actual Saturday to Saturday week of the whole summer for which my diary is empty and therefore I had foolishly made actual holiday-like plans (we don't have a not-paid-spell like US academics, so that isn't a good reason not to go sadly). The odds of me calling in sick that day are... well, higher than I'd like to admit. Right now, they're barely statistically distinct from 1:1).
Yeah, I know, come early September I'll still be 'free' and US bloggers will mostly be back at the chalkface (or interactive electronic doohickey face), but that's very little consolation right now!
"supervising High School kids having a 'science experience'"
ReplyDeleteUgh. I hate those. Sometimes, it's simply babysitting with the fear that the dope will break something expensive. Most students are decent and interested but don't provide anything useful to me. Only once, out of a dozen or so has a student been so talented to contribute to my research.
That's not a criticism of the students but of the administrators who push them (mostly their neighbors' and friends' kids) into my lab.
O grumpy, I'm on quarters, and very grumpy to still be teaching, too.
ReplyDeleteI'm on quarters, too, and countin' off the days of the ninth week with great joy. And week ten is short because of Memorial Day, and then club myself through finals, and then...
ReplyDeleteThat first sunny weekday, will find an outdoor cafe and order a beer at 11 in the morning. Because I can.
Me, too, me, too. I'm on quarters and am sharing your pain. We do get Monday off, which means that provides some respite... if you count 'grading all day' as a respite.
ReplyDeleteMy students checked out a month ago (earlier than their usual 'checkout'). We're all just biding time...
Same here. I'm on semesters, but they're offset by shorter winter and summer sessions. I can't really complain because of those nice long breaks, when I refuse to teach. My exhaustion levee burst this week, though, and I still have three weeks to go.
ReplyDelete