Tis the season…
Yup, it is that time again. The time when everybody looks back and things about what they have done in the last year. When everyone gets to relax. When everyone is filled with the spirit of happiness and brotherly love. When everyone can sit back and relax in what they have done well so far this year. So in this spirit I’d like to wish everyone a happy end-of-semester.
For anyone in higher education this time of year is not marked by commercialism or religious holidays: it is marked by the passing of courses, the giving of grades and the knowledge that you have done a good job and that you have done the impossible: you have survived another semester.
For the students who can now relax because they have completed, for better or worse (and too often worse), their courses for the semester.
For the Professors (including the poor and often forgotten Adjuncts who like to be called Professor, but are universally referred to with the abysmally unimportant title of “part-timers”) another herd of cattle has approached to feed at the trough of your knowledge; some have fed well and others are now starving by the side of the road blaming you for not having food that is interesting or important…er…tasty enough.
For the Deans who have had to wrestle demanding faculty and students, and be the mediators of accusations, often filled with half as many truths as untruths, ranging from unfair grading to cheating.
For the administrative staff who are only thought of when it is time to register for courses or pay bills, and take the brunt of the whining from both faculty and students when things don’t run smoothly, and are squirreled away in such impressive sounding caves as “Bursars”, “Admissions” and “Registrars.”
For the students refreshing their university’s websites (or checking their mailboxes) looking for their grades.
For the Administrative staff that have told those students a thousand times today alone when the grades will be posted.
For the Professors who are dreading submitting those self-same grades because of the barrage of emails and phone calls from panicked students who are sure to appear at their door…at 3a.m….in the snow…crying…to have those grades changed.
For those students who already have coats, mittens and directions to their professors house ready.
For the Administrative Staff that is going as fast as it can with all the new transcript requests that simply _must_ be sent out today even though it clearly states a 3 week waiting period on the form.
For those student’s who forgot that one application had to be in by January not April like everywhere else.
For those professors who are already getting requests to write recommendations for students they barely got to know and barely remember beyond a name, face and grade — and sometimes not all three at the same time.
For those students who painstakingly write the review themselves and slips it under the Professor’s door to be signed.
For those High School students who are finishing up those wonderful early decisions application that give those administrative staff something to do during the break: like they didn’t have enough paperwork left over from the last batch of papers.
For those same administrative staff who wonder why they have to be back to work on January 3rd while those damn over-glorified teachers don’t have be back for three or four weeks.
For those Masters students who are getting ready to teach their first course.
For the PhD students wondering how they are ever going to finish the most important paper they will ever right.
For those students who are already scoping out the best easiest professors on ratemyprofessor.com.
For those professors who have the dubious honor of being rated the easiest in the school.
For the bookstore workers who watch as students spend hard-earned cash on books that you know are over-priced.
For the families of those professors and students who are theoretically related to you, but you haven’t seen in over 3 month.
For those mothers who wonder how their son/daughter could possible have so much laundry: No, they did not wash any clothes this semester.
For those students who forgot what home-cooking tastes like and who began to believe that Ramen and grease where the only two food groups.
For those professors who are beginning to realize that that freshmen aren’t getting younger: you got older.
For those freshmen who realize they were woefully unprepared for college and in three months had to grow up more that they did in the last four years.
For those seniors who see that all that studying finally is paying off and they are almost done.
For all those that enjoy education for what it is: an enrichment experience.
For everyone else who is forgotten just as I forgot you.
Congratulations: you have survived another semester only one more before you get arrive at that point of nirvana where the past year is a memory and the next year is a long way off, and the most important thing on your mind is lemonade or ice tea.
Oh and there are a few other minor events that are happening too like Christmas, Hanukkah, Eid ul-Adha, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Festivus, Sinterklaas, a few Independence days and a host of other holidays, so Happy and Merry those too.