Yesterday was the first day of classes at Union, the start of my 22nd year as a professor. I’m coming off a year of sabbatical leave and starting a term as Chair of the department, so yesterday was especially draining— I taught a class for the first time in quite a while, gave directions to a startling number of confused frosh who had wandered into the wrong building, and fielded a slew of questions about course selections and major declarations and other administrivia. Then we had the annual “meet new faculty” meeting where I had to do a couple of introductions; that at least included an open-bar reception afterwards.
Anyway, the whole thing left me pretty drained, but in a good way. It’s just better on campus when the students are around— seeing the tables in the Wold atrium full of students chatting and working (see the photo above) is a real “God’s in His Heaven—/ All’s right with the world” moment after a long summer of eerie emptiness. (Further intensified by coming off a couple of pandemic years where congregating like this was officially discouraged…) The campus is just creepy when it’s empty, and as tiring as it is to give the same set of directions for the 20th time (“You’re in the wrong building. Go back through the glass doors, past the Starbucks, and to the left of the stairs.”) just having the bustle and activity and life back in the place picks me up enough to get through the first week.
As part of the social-media blitz for the start of the term, the key folks in the Dean of Students office did an adult version of the “First Day of School” photo that lots of parents do. One of them listed himself as starting 41st grade; as I said to him on Facebook, my first reaction was “Oof.” Followed by “Wait, he’s younger than I am…”
It’s striking to realize the extent to which my life has been shaped by the rhythms of the school year. This was my 22nd first day at Union, but if you count from kindergarten, as Matt did, I think I’d be in 45th grade. Once I got into school, I really never left— I went straight to college, and then to grad school, without any gap years. I did two years as a post-doc, but those were at Yale, so they were still tied closely to the academic calendar— the dining options got more extensive and the parking more difficult every September. And then I started at Union.
The closest I’ve come to decoupling from the academic calendar was probably for a couple of years in the 1997-1999 range, when I was deep in my thesis research at NIST and only rarely went to College Park for anything. Even there, though, things changed significantly in September and June: summer students would show up in June, and disappear in August, and then my paychecks would get fucked up in September, like clockwork.
(I was the first student ever to get the fellowship that paid for my Ph.D., so they didn’t have any well-established procedures for delivering my stipend, and Maryland’s crack HR team didn’t have a great deal of concern about whether I could pay my rent on time…)
Really, though, there’s a sense in which I ought to say I’m headed into 51st grade, because my dad was a sixth-grade teacher, so even before I was in school, my life was shaped by school. September meant big changes in the family routines and sometimes trips in to “help” my dad set up his room for the new year.
There’s really never been a time in my life when the start of a new school year didn’t matter, only the occasional weird year where it mattered slightly less, because I was on leave. But, of course, the two sabbaticals I’ve had where I didn’t continue to teach were both after the kids were born, so even when I wasn’t personally in school, I had vicarious school through them.
And this week also saw a couple of big first days for them. The Pip is starting sixth grade, which is in the middle school, and SteelyKid is starting ninth grade, which is high school. They were both nervous and excited in about equal measures, but things have gone well to this point (they’ve both had two days of mostly orientation-type activities, which had The Pip complaining of being both exhausted and bored…). I’m sure it will get more exciting in the coming weeks…
The fact that SteelyKid is starting high school also means that, in some sense, the clock is ticking on my ties to academia. In another four years, if all goes well, SteelyKid will be off to college, followed three years later by The Pip. Four years after that, if all goes well, they’ll both have degrees of their own, and be off into the wider world. At which point, I’ll likely be thinking about retirement, and unplugging from the academic calendar for the first time… ever. It’s still far enough off to be slightly unreal, but also frighteningly close.
For now, though, it’s a week of first days, and everything just feels right again. Students are “studying” in the atrium Starbucks, playing rugby and frisbee and baseball on the quads, and wandering lost and confused in the science and engineering complex. It’s a new year, full of hope and promise, and I’ll bask in that feeling while it lasts.
This is a little more contemplative than usual for me, but it’s that kind of morning. If you like this sort of thing, it does show up from time to time, and here’s a button:
If you would like to tell me I’m old (believe me, I know) or exclaim over how grown-up the kids look (The Pip is officially over five feet tall now), the comments will be open:
My eldest is 18 yo and off to Switzerland for his first year of, hopefully, 5 of engineering school... A bit nervous but he wants to go and I'm pleased to see him spreading his wings...
My youngest is 16... 2nd year of high school. Fingers crossed she doesn't get too stressed by grades and homework (she's a bit of a perfectionist).
Retirement is still a way off but definitely not getting younger... and yet so much I want to do.
You scientist types need to speed up the anti-aging stuff we were promised. Oh and the flying cars too while we're at it. Chop chop, no time to blog... ;)