Half Way Home

I'm not sure when it happened, but half of the Spring semester has elapsed. The spring always blows by before you notice, but this year has been even faster. I'd even thought I had taken precautions to not get caught unaware, but its seems to be for naught. Between the days off at the top of the semester, and then Playground a couple weeks back, and now Spring Break and then ESTA/USITT the week after, there just never was much semester in this semester.

And now it is half gone.

We finally finished our interviews for next year's class today. Luckily I am only involved in the Pittsburgh interviews. I am sure had I gone to NYC, LA, Chicago, and Miami things would feel even more like a whirlwind. So we finished with the hopeful candidates and then I stayed and worked late, on a Sunday, during Spring Break to get into a stack of grading that has been growing out of control like kudzu in my office.

That's the problem with giving homework, even worse with exams, once you give them and the students go to the trouble of actually doing them you kind of have to grade them. I used to be so much more aggressive in giving assignments. At the rate I am softening, in two or three more years I won't assign anything at all.

I did eventually manage to find my desk, and the floor, under all the assignments and exams. I got my mid-term grades submitted just like I am supposed to, and solicited any problems with the PTM students that other faculty might be having so I can get my "letters of doom" started. All in all though I think I will let those letters sit until we get back. No real reason to sully anybody's break. Not like they'll do anything about it until we're back anyway. Might as well keep the stress quotient down, I so rarely get to decide.

So half a spring semester in the books, two weeks without class, and then only like six weeks until the end.

Zoom! Where did it go?

I had planned, earlier you saw it if you were following the site, to tie myself to the thesis schedule the 3rd years are on for my own writing of a book. Although I think I still have a longer document than the students, it hasn't grown much lately.

So many projects start and stop, or don't start at all. This gig is never ending, with so little perceptible headway. At least every semester you get to take a deep breath and pick up the pieces that got dropped.

One quarter to go.