Final weeks

Final weeks are strange. Or maybe it’s just me, and I’m reliving my student days vicariously through my students.

In my experience teachers aren’t horrifically busy in the final teaching weeks of a year. (Unless they’re language teachers and they have to go through the hell of oral exams.) Students tend to be horrifically busy trying to make deadlines and do oral exams and fix things that they postponed or forgot and really need to fix last minute. (Suffices to say, this is impossible, unless you’re good at taking deep breaths and have infinite patience.)

It’s when the teaching stops that things get rough for us. You have to find those marks you put so carefully away three months ago. (Too carefully, as it turns out.) Leftover presentations, leftover assignments, in short: up in paperwork over your ears. (I tend to try and make the paperwork digital. The only advantage to this is that its easier to hide.) There’s thesis checking and the defences that logically follow. And this is all besides trying to get your exams checked in record time. (Or at least in time for resits.) You don’t plan too much and put your life on hold for a bit. (Lunch becomes the most important meal of the day, because there’s the risk of being asleep before dinner.)

Don’t pity us, though. There’s no greater satisfaction than sitting back after the rush and discovering (almost) everything went all right, and the things that didn’t are easy enough to fix. (Relatively speaking.)

But do gives us a thought, especially when you’re about to write an email you probably don’t need to send. ;)