t-minus 5 days

What do professors do over break? It’s almost time for the semi-annual bitch session where everyone gets to wonder how long it will take to crank out the grades. But not yet. That comes at the end of next week, at which point all of my professors will have had more than one month since they gave the exams.

Of less importance overall but greater importance today is the question why professors are so slow to post the first-class assignments. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like I’m some nerd desperate to start reading for next Monday and Tuesday’s first classes. Don’t worry—I can think of better things to do. But since the assignments are inevitable, it would be nice if they’d put up the assignments so I can do them at a leisurely pace, rather than post them on Friday so I end up waiting until Sunday night to get started. I’d like to think the reason most profs haven’t yet posted the assignments is because they are diligently crafting an entirely new syllabus (not the same one from the past 10 years) and frantically polishing up their plans for the best possible way to teach the class (instead of cranking out last year’s notes). But, um, but…never mind…