Towards the End of the Semester

My grad students walked into the class this morning looking particularly bleary eyed. There's the normal grad student, stressed out, overwhelmed look. And then there was this morning, with extra bags under their eyes and a glazed expression on their faces.

"Wow!!" I say "You all look like crap!!"

"Thanks!!" they cheerily replied. "So do you!!"

I love my grad students.

Now is the time that all the faculty and all the students are overwhelmed and panicked. We're not quite halfway into the school year but we're almost finished with the first semester. Every single one of us has not done everything we've wanted to do this semester. I don't care how long we've been professing, at this time of the year we're all surprised by how behind we are.

Let me restate that: we're all surprised by how big our "behind" is. And we haven't even started eating our way through the holiday parties yet.