Cycles
The Kenyon academic year is at a close. The seniors graduate in less than a week, and most of my friends are scrambling to get grades turned in. Summery things are already starting up - we got our first batch of CSA produce this weekend (lettuce, spinach, asparagus, honey, and maple syrup), and folks are preparing for reunion weekend. OSU still has a few weeks left, so I am scrambling to get papers written and reading finished.
I knew it would be tough to get my work finished while Kenyon was already done with its year. What I had not counted on was the distractions of the last few weeks of the Kenyon semester. Here's the thing: for some of our friends, the end of the school year means they leave. Mike, Fred, and Emily were all here on one-year contracts, filling in for people on leave. Once graduation is over, they will all scatter - Fred to Rhode Island, Emily to the DC area, and Mike to California. As a result, all those "we should really do n" things we've talked about all year need to happen in the next week, or they won't ever happen.
I'm not yet acclimated to the one-year faculty phenomenon. The student cycle is one thing - every now and then I even see someone and wonder aloud "didn't they graduate already?" With every year the students seem more and more separate from my life. This is a good and healthy thing. Faculty are another story. These are my friends - the people with whom I spend nearly every Friday night. We sing together in choir, play Settlers of Catan, watch each other's concerts, meet each other's significant others, play with each other's dogs. I am not yet prepared for these people to vanish from my day-to-day life.
This weekend Fred and Mike and Joe and I made beer - one of the items on that to-do list. We've promised to send them each a few bottles. I'd rather be able to sit down and share it with them, but you take what you can get, and I suppose email and letters are better than nothing.
Labels: milestones
posted by Alison @ 1:01 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
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At 2:51 PM,
held forth...
- When we lived in Bloomington, IN, Anna and I met people who were faculty or permanent residents who shied away from hanging out with grad students and their families because they knew those folks were just passing through. It could only end in heartbreak.
This is always one of my favorite times of year in Gambier, and reminds me of how connected I still feel to the place itself, in addition to all the wonderful folks I met there. -
At 3:12 PM,
lemming held forth...
- Then there are the people who want to belong but who are told, quite firmly, that no one cares because they are temps. So good for the ego.