Rhythms

The College’s blog tsarina reminded me today that it has been three months since I last posted anything.  I had told her early on to remind me when I was a blogslacker – and she has.

Today is the last day of Spring Break at the College.  So, it’s a bit quieter than usual and, actually it doesn’t feel much like spring – unless you live in Seattle.  But the sense that this is the quiet before the storm since everyone returns to campus on Sunday makes me reflect a bit on the rhythms of academic life.

I am an authority on this subject.  In fall of 1948 I was carted off to my first day of kindergarten (private, half-day since the Commonwealth of Virginia did not have public kindergarten in those benighted days) and I have been going to school every fall ever since.  That’s sixty-one years.  Clearly there is a significant failure of imagination here.

The year begins with a clean slate, lots of expectations and promise, and the belief in the possible.  By March, however, too many deadlines, too many events, too many distractions, some victories and disappointments leave everyone a bit worn around the edges.  But, we all must take a deep breath because the truth is that half of the year’s work gets done in the last half of March and, especially, April.

For everyone on campus, there are looming deadlines.  Finals lurk over the horizon, last concerts and exhibitions, honors and term papers, theses and dissertations, manuscripts to get off before the summer arrives and student assistants evaporate, grant proposals due.  Strategic plans are due, awards to be given and citations written, retirement dinners, and, oh yes, what about housing for next year, arrangements for that semester abroad, and finding that summer job, if there are any out there, that you’ve been putting off.  Every committee must finish its work because next September, most of the members will be doing something else.

So, now we tighten our seat belts, put our tray tables and seat backs in the full upright position and await a safe landing at Commencement in two months.

T.S. Elliot had the soul of an academic when he wrote:

APRIL is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers…. (The Waste Land)