The eye of the storm

Academics are a strange bunch.

However, before I go off on some tangent about how academics should really be classified as a Class C dangerous substance, allow me to digress on the title of this blog for a quick moment.

You see, it's not entirely what I had in mind when I started writing this blog. In Dutch we have a wonderful saying (among many, many, many, many others) which literally translates to "silence before the storm". It refers, on a literal level, to the perfect calm you usually see right before the storm from hades breaks loose. The trees stop fluttering, the birds stop twittering, and just when you're about to comment on how perfectly peaceful everything seems, a storm cloud pops up out of nowhere and dumps a thousand gallons of water on your head. On a metaphorical level it, of course, refers to a period of relative quiet, while you know something major is about to come up on the horizon. It would have been the perfect title for this blog. However, it doesn't translate into English. At least not that I'm aware of.

So I was stuck with using the American version of this saying, "the eye of the storm". Although it's close, it's just not quite the same, and the Dutch don't even have an equivalent. When you think about though, that does make sense, since only hurricanes have "eyes", and Holland has never ever experienced a true hurricane (and don't come crying to me about major storms - until you've seen your porch swing picked up ten feet into the air and slammed into your fence, you haven't seen anything. And in all honesty, that was just the "tail" of a hurricane). Interestingly, America does have major thunderstorms as well, but no sayings about them. So I was stuck using a saying about hurricanes, which really refers to a calm period right after a brief spell of insanity and right before the next spell is about to commence.

Anyway, pardon the digression. As I was saying, academics are strange. We all gripe and complain about our students, the amount of work we have to do throughout the semester, the difficulty of this particular cohort, how these students are the most demanding/spoiled/entitled we have ever seen, throughout the entire semester. We basically can't wait for it to be over. Seriously.

Then, when you're about two weeks away from finals, all that turns around, and suddenly all these same complainers suddenly wonder how we'll ever make do without our responsible seniors to tell the other students to be quiet and pay attention. How much we will miss their sensible input. How hard it will be to train the next cohort to meet their standards.

Another week later, and most faculty members are headed for a level five meltdown. Senior grades are due in 48 hours, and suddenly there are finals to grade, papers to collect, grades to calculate, and O-M-G why didn't we set the deadlines for these final projects way, way earlier. In the meantime, there are regular classes to teach, reviews to organize, and non-graduating finals to make.

And then somewhere in the middle of that is a pocket of peace. And quiet. Two hours between classes when you realize you've graded everything that was handed to you. Your reviews are prepped, your finals have been typed up, and your spreadsheets have been set up. You know you have thirty major papers coming in at 2pm, and more finals after that, but for now, there is absolutely nothing to do. Nothing, and you find yourself browsing sites you haven't looked at in weeks, wondering if you should start working on that grant proposal or manuscript.

Academics are weird.

And perhaps the title of the blog is appropriate after all.