Dr. Jekyll: Is there any day so wonderful as the first Monday after spring semester has finished?
Prof. Hyde: Given the usual difficultly of your rhetorical questions, the answer is clearly "no".
Dr.
Jekyll: What a joy it is to walk past fraternity row. The only sound
is that of the cleaning vans running the steam machines.
Prof. Hyde: I'll miss the frats' debauchery and sense of entitlement.
Dr.
Jekyll: The road construction crews started early this morning, but
most in our town celebrate their appearance as it coincides with the
disappearance from front lawns of beer bottles and public urination.
Prof. Hyde: Hey, when a man has to go, he has to go.
Dr.
Jekyll: The smell of the cleaning chemicals the maintenance staff uses
to give our building its annual sprucing make me light-headed at the
thought of no more students for three months.
Prof. Hyde: I find the chemicals useful in other ways.
Dr. Jekyll: And my office! Oh, my office! It is so quiet in my building I can hear deanlets thinking three floors away!
Prof. Hyde: You wouldn't be as happy if you knew what they were thinking about.
Dr. Jekyll: It's the most wonderful time of the year!! Happy Summer everyone!!
Now is when I start making voodoo dolls of the people who are slated for summer classes in the hopes that if enough tragic accidents come to pass, I'll actually get some work.
ReplyDeleteDeanlets think? News to me.
ReplyDeleteOn my campus the Most Wonderful Time of the year doesn't happen when grades are submitted but after all the post-semester meetings are done: pedagogy and critical thinking and assessment seminars that are not required but strongly encouraged. Who wants to sit through an all-day meeting the day after turning in final grades? I used to be responsible for planning some of those meetings, but now I'm on the other end, looking at an inbox full of e-mails from deanlets harping on the importance of participation. So I go. Sometimes. Reluctantly. BUT after they're over, I shake the dust from my feet and celebrate summer!
Parking is easier and the quiet is exquisite. Now I close my office door to avoid only my colleagues.
ReplyDeleteAt my former employer, it was nice after exams were over. The place was quiet, I could work in the library without hearing the senseless jabber of students, and there was lots of room in the gym.
DeleteAs Zora mentions, the danger spot to avoid is one's email inbox. Despite my college's very clear "no new work may be accepted after final grades are in" rule, turning in of final grades seems to have an almost magical ability to make long-missing work that somehow got "lost" materialize, in electronic form, in said inbox. Unfortunately, I've got a couple of email exchanges with colleagues going on at the moment, so I don't want to turn on a vacation message yet. I may have to craft a carefully-worded one (i.e. one that colleagues will recognize as aimed at students) nonetheless.
ReplyDelete