Monday, August 11, 2008

Last Week of Peace

It won't be long now.

As I wrote in a comment on another blog this morning, this is the last week of peace before the landing craft beach themselves in front of the dorms and apartments, disgorging the product of our public schools like Russians into Georgia. Or maybe that would be Sherman into the US state of the same name.

So much for the bucolic days and quiet streets so typical as the summer semester fades away to the quietest weeks in any college town.

We can already see the warning signs: Budget rental trucks and U-Haul trailers. One by one they appear, like Navy Seals clearing the beaches of obstacles or my greatN uncle's cavalry unit scouting the way for Sherman. It won't be long before they appear in waves.

I'd like to know how many cops are on vacation this week. I'll bet its a lot, since it will be nothing but overtime during the week of parties that lead up to the first week of hangovers in class. That all gets compounded by the start of public schools, as all of the Mommy Vans hit the road to carry Child Too Precious to Ride the Bus to school before going home and then to work. Three trips where there was only one trip the week before.

It really is amazing to experience every year. Its part of the rhythm of life. I should think about what periodic function best describes the exponential decay into calmness after the end of spring semester and the phase transition into madness when the kiddies arrive. Probably not far from the result when a square wave drives a simple circuit, but it needs a big overshoot at the start and a modest one for spring finals so it needs some coupled elements.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now, that's a depressing thought. I hadn't thought much past final exams for summer (later this week). But, next week it all starts back up with a week of long, boring, pointless faculty meetings, followed by all the fresh faces straight out of the public schools. Half of them will be gone by the middle of the semester. Until then, I won't have a place to park because all those students will be parking in faculty parking because they don't want to walk from the remote student parking once the close in parking gets full.