Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Overheard on Campus: Spring Break Edition

What have I been hearing on campus lately? Silence...blissful silence. Spring break is one of the times when we get a brief respite from the normal flurry of 40,000 students rushing back and forth between classes and coming to our offices asking us questions. Sure, helping students is part of my job, and it's one of my favorite parts of my job, but having a week of peace and quiet is wonderful. I managed to straighten up my office, knock a few items off my to-do list, and answer some old e-mails...all the while spending WAY too much work time finalizing details of the fundraiser this weekend.

Yesterday I got to take off part of the afternoon to accompany a group of international students to our local molehill ski slope for some snow tubing. When we arrived the tubing area looked pitifully small and pathetically eroded by recent rainstorms. But it turned out to be lots of fun, especially when groups of us hooked together and tubed extra fast all the way to the end of the hay-strewn bottom of the slope. I felt a twinge of yearning for the Alps and the exhilarating terror of sledding recklessly down Mt. Pilatus. But I've made my Central Pennsylvania bed, and now I have to lie in it. For the next few months, anyway.