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Murphy's Introduction to Universal Laws
August 24, 2005    File under: Teaching

First week of school. You wear a white shirt, a bird will poop on you as you're walking to class or to get a drink of water. The sky will open and dispose Deucalion's flood upon your newly dry-cleaned coat. The Starbuck's coffee you've obtained with a thank-you gift card from last semester's students will leap from its mass-produced double-insulated cup and stain the new slacks your grandmother sent you last week. Students will continue to arrive like assassin starlings in the crabapple trees. Like RTD busses in the downpour puddles. Like independent study requests in the e-mail inbox. Like committee assignments in unsealed envelopes.

Still, I have survived three days. Only two more to go. Team-teaching, committee meeting, first-year convocation. Then a weekend chasing deadlines. Straight, eight chasers.

Posted by Jake Adam York at August 24, 2005 6:50 PM



COMMENTS

Fortunately, I'm not teaching this term, so I'm not experiencing what you describe.

However, I am back in school to work on my doctorate, so I understand Murphy's Law. You'd think that at a school as large at UGA, someone could get the bookstores to function smoothly.

Ah well . . . good luck to you this term, Jake. And let me know when I can get a copy of Murder Ballads.

Posted by: Jeff Newberry at August 24, 2005 7:15 PM




Your wife's glass of wine on your favorite jacket, your favorite pub, as I recall. That's how it went last spring just before I arrived. Seems it's going as well as ever.

Posted by: Gina at August 25, 2005 12:28 PM




A horrible, terrible, no good, very bad first three days. They happen even in Australia. I hope the end of the week passes without anything falling out of the sky onto your favorite haberdashery.

Hey, at least storySouth looks great. How 'bout those Hunley poems!

Posted by: Dee at August 25, 2005 8:27 PM