Crescendo

The semester reached a crescendo today. I spent yesterday and this morning helping my students (and another class of students) finish making posters, went to the founder's day celebration during a windstorm, and learned that a tree had blown over in our yard. It was a little stressful. After it was over, I came home and had a drink. Or maybe two.

Each semester is different. I always worry a bit about the final research project in class writing class because sometimes it works great and sometimes it doesn't. Even when it isn't great, I always think it's better than if we hadn't done it. Research is always like that: you don't know for sure what the answer is going to be. And if you knew what the answer was, you wouldn't be doing it, would you. This semester, I offered to open up the BCRC on the last Sunday afternoon before the research project was due, expecting most of the class to use the chance to get the project finished. Only one student showed up. Yesterday -- when on the day before the project I still hadn't seen a single poster -- I began to sweat a bit. But the students pulled it together. Before I left for lunch, all but one group had their poster printed.

I don't usually do anything for lunch, but today was "Founder's Day". The University put on a giant catered lunch to celebrate. When I left the building, I was surprised how windy it was -- I hadn't heard that in the forecast. The celebration was near the library, which (being 26 stories) does weird things with the wind on a regular day. Today, the winds buffeted me as I walked to the celebration, making me stumble it was so strong.

The plan had been to meet Alisa at 12:30 (when I thought the lines might have gone down some). Alisa was late (big surprise), but the line was extremely long -- almost a quarter mile. I waited in line and hadn't even made it to the front of the line when Alisa joined me 20 minutes later. Then Lucy called.

Lucy said, "I heard a funny noise and checked and found that a big part of a tree has blown down in the yard." I asked, "Did it hit the house." She said, "I don't know." I said, "Well, can you check?" After a few moments she said, "I don't think it has." I said, "Do you need us to come home and check?" But she seemed pretty sure things were OK.

After another 25 minutes, we had our food and were sitting in a giant tent which did a remarkable job of keeping out the wind. It was a great lunch!

After lunch, I went back to the office and we had our final class meeting and poster session. Al Richmond stopped by and I invited him to see the students posters too. It went fine!

Still, the stress of the afternoon rather played on me and, by the time I got home -- after I had checked on the status of the tree -- I was glad to fix myself a cocktail and watch the evening news.

There's more to do: we'll need to find a tree service to deal with the tree (and maybe deal proactively with some of the other trees in the yard). And I want to make some adjustments in how the research project go: we just haven't had enough time for it in recent semesters, so I guess I need to cut one of the other assignments to make more time. But there will be time another for those things in the days that follow. For the moment, I can take pleasure in my students' fine work and the tree that didn't hit the house.