The Spring Semester is Long

I know, I know; somewhere during this semester I'll be saying "you may not realize it, but the year is already over." Its usually right before spring break and the sentence goes something like: "there's one week and then there's break and then we're back and there's carnival and final projects and the year is over, so get your shit together." Invariably I will be writing a letter to 3rd Year Grads this week to say "oh by the way, your time for thesis is almost up." But let me tell you, looking at the course timelines today when I was doing syllabi, the spring looked really long indeed.

Of course it isn't true, and it will be May before we realize (and hopefully by then I will have moved again, finished a kitchen renovation and sold a house in Chicago amongst many other achievements). In fact classes this spring actually end in April, which actually sounds pretty early.

What happened? A confluence of scheduling decisions conspired to get us nearly every day of the semester for a change. In the entire spring there are only 4 missed days. In the fall we miss 3 days in Thanksgiving week alone. This spring we miss half a day for MLK day - CMU does a "day on" with MLK activities in the afternoon. I guess the thought is that if people didn't have to come for the half day they wouldn't come in for the activities. We miss one Friday for midsemester break. I think I remember a time when this was a Friday and a Monday and it was a month away from Spring Break but now they are contiguous and it's just the one day. And then we miss a Thursday and a Friday for Carnival. The upshot? MW classes miss one half day for the entire semester and TR classes miss one full day. Even the oft canceled Friday classes don't do too poorly compared to normal.

Oh yeah, "normal" so what isn't happening that does in a normal year? In other years, in what sometimes look like alternating years, but that isn't by design I think, we have a week off for Playground. This year's Playground festival was in the fall. So there's one week on for class that has often been off. But definitely the biggest blow this year was the scheduling of USITT. Drama Design and PTM classes often wind up canceled for as much as a week for the annual theatre technology conference. This year USITT, which is in Charlotte, is also scheduled concurrent with our Spring Break. It's like an academic double whammy: there are class days that are typically not class days and then on top of that there are work days (ok maybe "work" is too strong a word, but they certainly aren't vacation) that are typically off days.

There's also typically a Spring Faculty Meeting that manages to cancel at least half a day of class, but curiously this year there isn't.

You know how sometimes when you're talking about a workday and you say the hours aren't bad but the minutes seem to go on forever? At least looking forward it seems like the semester won't be bad but the weeks seem to be piling up.

But yes, I know I'll be sounding the Critender 2000 in what seems like 5 minutes.