Happy Holidays...

Well, that's it. One week off and no more leave in the diary until the University closes for a few days at Christmas. That's depressing.

My fellow blogger FSP writes that her summer season is frantic with travels and work. Mine is more stay-at-usual-desk-and-work. Admittedly campus is a very different place during the summer, but I can't quite work out whether I like it or not. Our term finished 2 weeks ago, and I was on a "British = cool (temperature)" beach last week, so this is the first real week of "quiet". Campus seems to have exhaled and collapsed as the students left. Some departments are empty - although mine is just quieter than normal. We still have MSc students and grad students to supervise. I still have some teaching admin to do since we have a fieldcourse running in September that needs organising. However it is undoubtedly true that there are less interruptions to the working day, and there is a chance that I can tick some long term goals off the to-do list. However, this opportunity merely reveals that I excel in procrastination and somehow manage not to acheive my "personal scholarship" list even in the summer. There is also the nagging feeling that a university without the vast majority of its students is somehow less of a university. Perhaps all those years of explaining the lack of a summer break when people assume we are like school teachers (OK, I know many of them work in the holidays too but...) are finally getting to me.