Horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad semester start

Today is a Monday morning in August of 2013.  Your printer announces that it is out of toner as soon as you turn it on, this being as inconvenient a time as can be imagined.  TPP is not looking and feeling his finest because of the lingering effects of a stomach flu.  And it's the first day of a semester which always borders on chaos even under the best of circumstances.  No amount of coffee can make this better, and you want to set a good tone for the whole semester.  Cancelling your first class would not be the way to do that, but a lack-luster introduction may even be worse.  Revision of health prognosis - lingering is too positive; GI tract turmoil is unrelenting.  However when you are up in the middle of the night visiting your toilet with the excellent garden view, you do get to see the raccoons foraging through your garbage.  Even from inside the 2nd floor window, they make the felines nervous.  TPP will not even consider trying to figure out the online software used for our courses because that requires a much more positive attitude than can be mustered at present.  Generally TPP likes new semesters, the new beginnings, the quickly fading eagerness to learn when it turns out to involve work.  Oh, dear, see how this is going?  Abort!  Abort!     

The semester begins when!?

TPP suffers from a day-date disconnect that only gets when complicated by holidays.  Having operated on a M-F schedule for so many decades, it is hard to think in other terms, and things like dates don't matter much.  Here is how it doesn't work.  OK, having checked with Mrs. Phactor that today is a Friday, TPP proceeds to get lost in various activities.  This means that while well aware that the semester begins on January 14, it comes as rather a surprise that that is this coming Monday, according to the dept secretaries who remind faculty of such things.  Things also get out of whack when a day off makes the next day seem like a Monday, and the M-F schedule resets automatically.  Now is not the time to panic; no matter what, the students will still be less well prepared than the faculty.  So on Monday, the first day of class, some students won't be present.  "Didn't figure you'd cover anything too important."  Yeah, we'll go over the syllabus, the whole plan for the course, the lab, the lab portfolios, exams, grading, and all the rest, so they'll be lost later, and will actually take offense when they ask questions later if you point out that they missed that material by figuring you wouldn't cover anything important, and the reason why would be that too many students would be absent.  If TPP stayed away until the class was ready to start, you know when they all agreed it was time to get going, how long would it be until they came and got me?  Best not try that experiment. My philosophy is that if the material is covered once in class, clearly, with supporting documentation, my duty has been fulfilled, and now the responsibility rests with the student, strike that, young adult!  Who wants to be a nag?   None of this matters because each semester starts with a sense of anticipation, a positive feeling, and good intentions.  Now what needs to be done!  Panic!

Fall Semster Approaches

The Fall Semester approaches.  Classes begin next Monday, TPP thinks.  The department secretaries usually remind me.  Everyone in a college town knows this, so the inevitable question arises: are you ready?  Well, of course not!  But TPP is as ready as he needs to be.  You see we're talking students here, and to be ready only means you must be out in front of them, and when it comes to readiness, students are amateurs and faculty are seasoned professionals, wily veterns, fast to the mark and quick off the start (sounds like some olympics influence creeping in).  Now perhaps the questioner intended the question as in, are you ready for a change, ready to get back into the classroom (TPP never ever teaches classes in the summer.)?  No.  There's plenty to occupy my time and interest my mind outside the classroom, and generally you learn more there.  Of course, at the end of the month, this month, there will be that little thing called a paycheck, and for that reason, TPP heads back into the classroom, where if all goes well, a few students get convinced to get out of the classroom and really start learning, and this happens just often enough to be gratifying.  What is not fun are all the other things that start up at the same time: faculty meetings, committee meetings, meetings on meetings, reports, retorts, surveys, and so on, because everyone wants everything from everybody to show that they are important, useful, and necessary, and since each of them is only asking for one thing, they see no problem, and those of us on the receiving end have the first couple of months of the semester sullied by such stuff.  This is without question the worst part of the job.

The slumbering giant awakes

University campuses are strange beasts. They can transform from desolate ghost towns to crowded dynamos of activity almost over night. Over the holiday break the Phactor marveled at the solitude of walking home through the central quad, which today is bustling with people. It is a transformation as marvelous as watching Lee Marvin's drunken sot become Kid Shaleen, one bright moment in an otherwise forgettable movie. Uh oh, students! That means classes have started and it's time to check the schedule for teaching obligations! Yes, in exactly one hour the semester begins, and for the first time in a very long time, about 15 years, the Phactor will be teaching a new course to fill in for a colleague on leave. The subject, general plant biology, is neither difficult nor unknown, but it has been at least 35 years since last the Phactor taught this subject, and it's surprising how much work a new course actually is. It doesn't really help to have gotten class materials from a colleague once you discover that you really don't think alike at all. So now to get ready to meet the eager young faces ready to do battle with ignorance and push back the frontiers of knowledge, and just maybe figure out that plants are not just green animals.

August, the academic new year

Those of us whose lives revolve around academia, especially those of us who actually do the work of educating, which almost universally means faculty on nine month appointments, march to the beat of a different drummer, the academic calendar. My point here is not to criticize the calendar, or the 2nd associate assistant vice president whose pitiful job, even though certainly making more money than yours truly, it is to construct this dictatorial beast. So, no cheap shots will be taken. Besides if you start criticizing the calendar twerp, then the monkey who does the campus directory, the one that requires that you know the university's complete organizational chart to find anything, would take a drubbing so severe that it would actually generate sympathy for them, and that would detract from my postitive energy.

Although August is a funny time for a new year, it deserves some celebration, just like New Year's Eve revelries on the Georgian calendar, and most certainly we celebrators of the academic new years often have a drink or three on this hallowed eve. Actually the Phactor likes these beginnings because everyone starts out in anticipation of so many good things happening, and it takes several weeks, about the time of the first exam for the rosy glow to fade a bit, when both parties begin to face the realities that success takes some effort and that not everyone expended as much as required. But that is part of the job.

Ah, but that's then and this is now, and the energy and excitement are something to be enjoyed, although the week immediately before classes is something to be avoided altogether, if possible, because our small city becomes a mad house, as would any municipality whose population increases by 50%, and only in the 18-22 year old category, virtually overnight.

So come next Monday my students will be told that they start my courses fully able to grasp an A, and that my expectations are that they all will. And that is the wonderfulness of new years, a time to set aside the certain knowledge of what will happen, and to hold out hope that this semester will be THE semester when all my students achieve what they are fully capable of achieving if other things did not get in their way. The sad reality is that even reality shows can be a higher priority for some than the best botany course ever. Still some of them will achieve this, even to their own surprise, so the Phactor can still be optimistic and still look forward to new beginnings with new people after so many years in the business. Happy 41st new fall semester from the Phactor. Let's hope it's a good one.