Oh dear. Fall lectures finished, final grades almost finally calculated, department and college meetings all wrapped up. . . we now enter that in-between-time, the liminal zone, the border land that lies north of the first semester and south of the second, the period that Ordinary People regard as the ridiculously long vacation in which wastrel academics (all inveterate liberals, needless to say) sit around and drink sherry. Actually, it's the time in which Real Academics do what they, and the people who determine their incomes, regard as their Real Work. This is the thing that students (and their parents) never quite get--that actually, they and their interests and needs and ambitions and, well, their education, are utterly secondary to the university system.
The problem is--ok, let's face it, there are lots of problems with it--but, on a totally selfish level, the main problem, for me, as an Academic who aspires toward being Real, is that once I've submitted my final grades, all I want to do is, well, you know, Do Christmas. I want to bake Christmas cookies, hundreds of thousands of cookies in various shapes and sugars. I want to wrap every box in the house. I want to sniff cinnamon and mainline eggnog. I want to recite the second chapter of Luke and read A Christmas Carol out loud and listen to seven different recordings of The Night before Christmas. I want to play every Christmas cd we have and watch every Christmas tv special.
In other words, I don't want to work. I want to do anything but work. Even hanging out with red-nosed reindeers or ringing jingle bells incessantly seems preferable to work. I have three book proposals to draft and a book chapter to write and a long overdue book review to submit. I should be excited. No students! No lectures! No grading! For almost six weeks! Just me and Ideas. Real Academics just love that stuff.
I think I'm a Quasi-Academic. A Quasi-Academic slacker Christmas addict. Has anyone seen the fruitcake?
Yay for tenure!
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