The End and the Beginning

And so the semester winds to a close. All of them. Or at least all of the ones that are going to do so.

Home Campus finished up last week, and we had our commencement ceremony on Tuesday. It’s always a lovely thing to see the students graduate – many of them never thought they’d go to college at all, let alone succeed there, and yet there they are: newly minted alumni. I wish them well. We moved the ceremony into the theater this year which meant both the faculty/staff and the students were up on the stage. I’m not sure why we were seated in front of the graduates when we were just there to dress the set. Nobody’s sitting in the audience to see me, after all. But there we were.

The campus for my remote class finished up this week – my final was Wednesday evening, and I spent last night grading by the light of the NHL playoffs. They did about as well as they always do on that exam, and I posted the final grades today. Another one for the books.

Let me just pause to say here that if I ever needed one more reason to dislike the Boston Bruins, their inability to dispatch the Florida Panthers – a team 43 points below them in the standings, which is almost as many points as Anaheim had for the season as a whole – in the first round will do nicely. I never did see the end of the game last night since it went 13 seconds shy of four overtime periods and ended around lunchtime today, but the Panthers won and I strongly suspect they will win this series because of it. Nothing good should happen to Florida while it is the leading edge of Fascism in the US.

My summer schedule looks pretty light on official duties – my perpetual class rolls on, and I’ve got a 2-day/week appointment for my advising position, mostly so I can be there for the new student orientation and registration days – though I have enough other projects that I can keep myself busy. I’m scheduled to teach a class this fall that I haven’t taught since 2015 so that will need to be revised (or at least brought up to date). I need to tear down my US2 class and rebuild it from the joists out as I have been threatening to do since 2019, but this year for sure. I would like to finish weeding and sorting the books in my office at home, a project that has progressed in fits and starts since 2019 as well – I’ve gotten through two thirds of the shelves and removed about a dozen boxes of books all told (not that you can tell) but the rest of it needs to be done. I have multiple genealogical projects stalled at various points. I’d like to get back to reading. And sleeping.

Also, we’re hoping to do a bit of traveling this summer as well.

For right now though I suspect I will do as little as possible for a few days. I’m not sure I remember how to do that. But it will be worth trying.

Happy summer to all.