Breathing room

I finally finished up my first semester here. My colleagues and I have been playing the "how many more papers" game for weeks. One of us will walk into the department triumphantly saying "I'm down to 87!" and the rest of us will either grumble enviously or trump that number with a "64" or something. It keeps us semi-sane. Friday I was down to three when I got a call from the registrar telling me that she had a distraught student of mine in her office. The tone--"one of your students"--was exactly that of a mother telling her home-returning husband of daytime naughtiness: "wait till you hear what your son did today." My student had missed the final for no good reason. Just thought it was another time. So I was about to turn in my grades with an F in his slot, but the registrar pressured me to let him take the final late. So I sat with him for another three hours. Here at N.C. it is the faculty's responsibility to do more work when the students behave like irresponsible morons, apparently. That's the mission statement. Rrrg. Oh well. It wasn't a huge sacrifice; I got work done anyway. But I did miss a faculty Christmas party and I had to abandon my out-of-town guest.

It's also the prerogative of a student at a school like this to complain to me that his grade is unfair, apparently. As an undergraduate, I would never in a billion years have considered flaming my professor on e-mail over the mathematics of a discussion grade, especially if I had skipped class and not done the work. ESPECIALLY if I had that same professor twice in the next semester. But my students are apparently a different breed, for whom "entitlement" has a very personal meaning.

Deeeep breaths. It's over and now I can focus on the overall good results of this semester, the planning for next semester, which promises to be slightly more fun, and the teaching-free weeks I have in which to pump out some semblance of professional research. Oh, and there are the holidays, too. Going to Minneapolis for Xmas with the family, no plans for New Years. I may just get in the car and drive somewhere at random. I'm due for an adventure and I need to get out of Wisconsin.

I spent this afternoon writing recommendation letters for a former student who's applying to Ph.D. programs, including Harvard and Columbia. She's smarter than me, fortunately. It's a little odd to be recommending someone to a school that rejected me. Oh well. It was their loss, anyway. I'm really proud that she's going to grad school at all. One of my kids! But of course she was my student when I was a 23-year-old T.A. and she's only two years younger than me. So she's not really my kid. The process of writing "Assistant Professor, Nowhere College" over and over makes all the more tangible the difference between institutions like Columbia and this place. I feel like Satan beginning his journey through the infinite expanse of chaos, straining to see the tiny winking point of light that is the paradise of a respected research University. Must. Get. Better. Job.

But first, must eat more Christmas cookies and take a well-deserved breather.