Skip to main content

Locusts

The new semester has come, and with it the students. It's like an annual invasion of insects with drivers' licenses. People are double-parked everywhere, sweating parents are trying to conceal their glee and/or sadness, and a new crop of freshman are positively vibrating with excitement at being let loose upon the world.

This is truly an event that fills me with ambivalence. I work at a university. I wouldn't have a job without the students because I study them. I even really enjoy teaching them. However, there's that moment when I'm desperately looking for a parking spot and some kid who has no idea how to parallel park is blocking traffic and if I could wiggle my nose and make them all disappear, I would. This also happens when it takes twice as long to get coffee at Cool Beans, when they use the elevators to go to the second floor, and when they appear to not understand that walking in front of my car is a bad idea. Really, it is.

The end result is that the noisy invaders of my quiet world have arrived, and it's time to gear up for a new semester of data collection. I try to look at each semester like a roller coaster ride. Once you get on, you can't get off until the end. There will be highs, there will be lows, and it will fly by. Sometimes it's terrifying and sometimes it's exhilarating. Here we go.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alie & Georgia are lushes.

Last night I hosted an Alie & Georgia cocktail birthday party. We went from 8 to 2 and tried 8 different cocktails. There was also ice cream cake and a hookah bc, well, I throw good parties, and Jeremy deserves nothing less. There would have been a fire pit, but something, something sleet. The fact that we only got to try 8 means there can be more Alie & Georgia parties in future bc there are so many left!  I would have included more pictures, but we were, uh, too distracted to take them.  And now, a review: Drunken Donuts Our first cocktail of the evening, I decided to serve these as little shots with a Spudnut garnish bc they are 2 parts alcohol to 1 part coffee. They contain staggering quantities of espresso vodka, coffee liqueur, and chocolate liqueur. A shot was about as much as you need, despite the recommended serving of a mug! of the stuff. This was our first hint that Alie & Georgia must be lushes with liver related super powers.  On a side note, these were
3 comments
Read more

2011 Reading Challenges

On the first day of this new year, I am pulling together the reading challenges in which I want to participate.  There are so many that sound interesting that I'm not doing, particularly a bunch of them that are regional authors, which I'm trying to cover with my Global Reading Challenge.  I've chosen a bunch of them, but the problem won't be reading quantity, but more like reading strategy.  I read 3 or 4 books a week and most of these challenges allow crossovers, so I see no problems reading enough books, merely reading the right books and then, perhaps more challenging, writing about them, which some challenges require, and some only suggest.  Either way, it's a neat way to prioritize reading for the coming year. The Challenges in Which I Shall Participate Southern Literature Challenge - I've never read enough Southern Lit, and while some of the newer stuff is truly awful, I'd like to explore some older books. It's any book set in the South by a S
4 comments
Read more

The Land of Lost Things

I met my new therapist last week.  I test drove a few, and she was the one that stuck.  She seems like she's not going to let me get by with any bullshit, and she said a couple of things that zinged me in our very first meeting.  That was unexpected, delightful, and now, with time to think about it, terrifying. I've been doing so much soul searching lately, so much careful consideration of my life and where I am - you'd think I'd be finding myself, but instead I feel so completely lost.  A few reasons: 1. I sabotage relationships in a really predictable way.  I had always thought of this behavior in one way, but with one sentence, this woman last week made me question everything I thought about that.  It's good to question it; it's what I wanted, but to be confronted so quickly by something that I had never considered is frightening.  I've spent so much time trying to figure this stuff out, and it turns out that I've been so completely wrong about so
6 comments
Read more