And so the end is near. I can see it, just over there on the horizon \u2014 the end of the semester. <\/p>\n
When you work at a college, years are no longer years. They\u2019re semesters. And semesters fly by like someone\u2019s yanking them away with string. <\/p>\n
They start out slow, gain speed and roar out of sight before you can say, \u201cWhat the heck\u2019s a semester?\u201d <\/p>\n
And when they end, they take a whole new crop of kids with them, headed for the real world to claim jobs, make families and wonder for the rest of their lives how they could have run up $20,000 in pizza debt.<\/p>\n
This semester I\u2019m losing a bunch of them. My kids. I\u2019ve been with Flagler College almost two years now, and my office runs the student newspaper. So I\u2019ve got a chance to get to know a bunch of them, and it\u2019s getting me a little misty thinking about them going away. <\/p>\n
What will I do with my time? Work?<\/p>\n
All day they pop into my office, dropping their bodies in a chair like you dump clean laundry on the bed. Sometimes they sigh or stare. Rarely do they have anything important to say, and usually I\u2019m in the middle of some panic attack or crisis involving mass quantities of money I shouldn\u2019t have spent. I speak fast like my calf is brushing up against an exposed electrical wire. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019sup?how\u2019sitgoing?Youdoingalright.Goodgoodgood.Nowwhattheheckdoyouwantanditbetterbeimportantbecauseifitisn\u2019tI\u2019mcallingsecurity \u2026 again.\u201d<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t have anything important to say because they\u2019re college kids and the world is a giant pool of inexpensive time that can be spent at their leisure. <\/p>\n
They touch things on my desk and ask about various items.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d they say.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a paperclip.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the court order requiring you to leave my desk alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
I get important sounding phone calls, cover the speaker and say things like, \u201cI really need to take this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo problem,\u201d is the answer. \u201cGot all the time in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course they do. That\u2019s how I was when I was in school. There was something truly wonderful about hanging out in someone\u2019s office, knowing that they couldn\u2019t get any work done, and making them answer ridiculous question after ridiculous question, like: \u201cSo what\u2019s it like being that old?\u201d or \u201cIs it true that as you age and hair grows in your ears you can hear it rustle?\u201d<\/p>\n
Now they ask things like that of me. <\/p>\n
I like to think I have wisdom to impart. The other night during the student newspaper layout, I helped a girl burn a music CD. <\/p>\n
\u201cAren\u2019t you embarrassed?\u201d I asked her. \u201cYou\u2019re the youth of America with all your technological savvy. Yet you need help from Dinosaur Sam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes I have really wonderful things to tell them, and say it, and they appear to listen, and I think to myself, this is fantastic, we really made a connection, and I might have just changed a young person\u2019s life, to which they respond, \u201cDid you know you actually have two parts in your hair today\u201d or \u201cthat sideburn is longer than the other.\u201d <\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to miss this bunch. How I\u2019ve come up with the perfect nicknames for them: Heffery instead of Jeffery, The Hippie Twins, Moody Lou, Buzzhead, Mrs. Drama Queen, Ugh!, Guy whose name I don\u2019t know and Eddie. There are others. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ll miss how they don\u2019t ever do anything I say, and laugh when I get mad. The more mad I get, the more they laugh, and eventually I go home and have a good cry. <\/p>\n
How they think I must be really important because I have a water cooler in my office. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo you buy that with your expense account?\u201d they ask. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it fell off a truck I was riding behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
They\u2019re a good bunch, and I\u2019m gonna\u2019 miss them all. Soon I\u2019ll begin training new ones, and answering new questions about paperclips and why my hair parts like it does. But will it ever be the same again? I hope so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And so the end is near. I can see it, just over there on the horizon \u2014 the end of the semester. When you work at a college, years are no longer years. They\u2019re semesters. And semesters fly by like someone\u2019s yanking them away with string. They start out slow, gain speed and roar out of sight before you can say, \u201cWhat the heck\u2019s a semester?\u201d And when they end, they take a whole new crop of kids with them, headed for the real world to claim jobs, make families and wonder for the rest of their lives how they could have run up $20,000 in pizza debt. This semester I\u2019m losing a bunch of them. My kids. I\u2019ve been with Flagler College almost two years now, and my office runs the student newspaper. So I\u2019ve got a chance to get to know a bunch of them, and it\u2019s getting me a little misty thinking about them going away. What will I do with my time? Work? All day they pop into my office, dropping their bodies in a chair like you dump clean laundry on the bed. Sometimes they sigh or stare. Rarely do they have anything important to say, and usually I\u2019m in the middle of some panic attack or crisis involving mass quantities of money I shouldn\u2019t have spent. I speak fast like my calf is brushing up against an exposed electrical wire. \u201cWhat\u2019sup?how\u2019sitgoing?Youdoingalright.Goodgoodgood.Nowwhattheheckdoyouwantanditbetterbeimportantbecauseifitisn\u2019tI\u2019mcallingsecurity \u2026 again.\u201d They don\u2019t have anything important to say because they\u2019re college kids […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}