4 more nights

Certainly we have never been more like a typical college campus than these last couple of days: it’s exam time, and students have been hunkering down.  I met a student in a corridor yesterday who’d just completed his last exam—classes that have met on “A” days gave theirs yesterday, and the “B” classes (these are just scheduling designations and indicate nothing about the level or quality of the courses) will have theirs tomorrow, with a “Study Day” scheduled for today.  The faculty now face a very demanding time, with their grade deadlines fast approaching, and I am caught up in their haste, since I have 80 or so Global Studies papers to grade along with my preparations for the Convocation event that is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon and lots and lots of wrapping up (and packing).  The shipboard auction a few days ago included an item according to which Dean Vieira and I have to serve as waiters for a meal in his cabin tonight; that’s just as well, because in order to settle a conflict between staff members who wanted to hold a backgammon tournament in the faculty/staff/Lifelong Learners lounge this evening and faculty who wanted to be able to do their grading there, I volunteered my office for the tournament and offered to provide refreshment from the last dregs of my budget.  (That negotiation took much of yesterday morning, which will tell you a bit about what academic administration consists of.)  My family and I had a kind of farewell dinner in the special dining facility on Deck 5 last night—very pleasant, very celebratory, and as astonishing as everything else here: I mean, to be brought Cherries Jubilee in the middle of the Pacific!  So we are not entirely like a typical college campus.  We’ll be least so on Wednesday—a couple of days ago we had a logistics briefing in the Union to get ready for our final disembarkation in San Diego—at least from my point of view, because at home I’m used to the students’ leaving while the rest of us stay to get ready for the next round, the next semester, the next bit of writing.  But on Wednesday only the crew will stay, and the rest of us will say our goodbyes, transients that we are, have been.