Ending a semester

All of life is marked by passages.  Some of them are obvious, some not so much.  We use calendars of varying sorts to track these moments.  Some calendars end in December and begin in January.  Chinese calendars and Jewish calendars are much older than the Julian calendars, and mark time in different ways.  Those of us that follow church calendars know that the passage of time is noted by color changes, and for now we are trapped in the ongoing season of Ordinary Green.  While I live in the world of January to December, and I worship in the Christian calendar, I work on the academic calendar.

The school calendar.  More specifically the semester system.  But if you haven't been to College or University lately, the times they are a changin'.  Yes, there is a Fall, Spring and Summer semester, but within those three semesters lie other measures of time.  Currently it is the summer semester.  At my institution we have three varieties of summer school, long and two short.  Or in the vernacular Sessions A, B and C.  Session A is eight weeks long, encompassing the months of June and July.  Sessions B and C are four weeks long, one occupying June and the other July.  In the fall and spring it is so much more complicated -- we have sessions through A-J.  And they run from 16 weeks, 10 weeks, 8 weeks and 4 weeks.  In the Fall I am scheduled to teach several A's, a couple of B's, a D and a G.  Seriously, can't tell you what I am doing without a chart.

Which means at any point in time during a 16 week period you may be starting or ending a class.  Now starting is not all that difficult, you show up and teach.  Actually the difficult part is remembering to show up -- hence the chart.  The difficult part -- ending the semester.  Ending a semester is never easy.  The easy part is saying farewell to students that you have grown attached to.  Trust me, it may have only been four weeks, but cover an entire college textbook in four weeks and you are attached to those people.  The complicated part is completing all the paperwork.  Documentation can't be put off.  So you may finish a class in early September, mid October or December, but you still have to post grades, complete learning outcomes and complete attendance reports.  Regardless of when you finish.  Ending a semester is never fun.  For my clergy friends, imagine completing your audit 8 - 9 times a year.

And here's the delight.  I have one down, two to go before summer's done.  Then I think I finish semesters in September, October, and December.  I think.

need to get to work on that chart.