Entry 4: In Which I Am Nearly Trampled In The Halls

Our winter break is a lovely five weeks long, during which most of our 9,000 undergrads vanish. A few linger to take a winter class, but most of them are gone. Faculty and grad students generally take a little time off, then return to take full advantage of the peaceful campus and lack of teaching responsibilities. Many of us get the bulk of our work done over winter and summer breaks.

It is always such a shock when the undergrads come flooding back on the first day of the semester. I'm simply never prepared for how many of them there are, and how rowdy they can be. It's not that we don't want them around; after all, without the undergrads there would be no reason for the rest of us to be here, and personally I do enjoy teaching them. But over break we really get used to being able to leave the lab door open without the constant distraction of noise in the halls, to get on the shuttle bus without being squashed half to death by the crowd, to walk out between buildings without catching a face-full of cigarette smoke or a stray hackey-sack to the head.

But there was no way to avoid it: yesterday morning they came swarming back, all 9,000 of them, with their sound and fury, their ipods and cell phones, their class schedules and campus maps. They've taken over the hallways, the campus center, the catwalks, the classrooms...... at least the labs and offices are still ours. If the madness of the new semester gets to be too much, I can always shut my door and pretend it's still winter break......