The calm before the storm

Tomorrow the Phactor's bread and butter begin returning to campus and a sleepy college town turns into vehicle, people, and stuff chaos. Clearly people in the education business approach this with mixed emotions. Most students approach the new academic year with a great deal of enthusiasm, and my job is to assist them as well as possible to maintain that enthusiasm, but after so many years, this being the start of my 5th decade of college teaching (starting as a graduate student), the reality is that some will not succeed for a variety of reasons the most common being procrastination combined with a bit of laziness or at least a desire to expend the least effort possible. The dread feeling creeping into my office is not from the students, or my classes, or the research, it's the black hooded specters of paperwork, committees, and meetings, and you find yourself thinking "at this stage in my career what does it really matter?" which is of course a type of bad attitude not of my making. And tomorrow it all begins. Guess it's time to start preparing for those classes, or do some field work!