fall break looms

For me, the first seven weeks of the fall semester always goes by faster than any other seven week period of the year. I don’t know why. I don’t even wish to speculate as to why time flies sometimes and sometimes it doesn’t.

But here I sit, with only one full day remaining in the first half of the first semester, wondering how it can possibly be time for a mid-semester break already. I don’t mind the break at all. I’ll enjoy two days at home with Sydney and Morgan (the daughter and the dog). We’ll play in the yard and enjoy the color. We’ll take a nap each day. We’ll read books and watch Barney. We'll eat popcorn and ice cream.

I do find these breaks a bit scary. In some of my classes I’m thinking, “how can this be… we haven’t gotten anywhere yet.”

I also try to put myself in the shoes of my students. While this is my seventeenth fall break (4 as a student, 3 as an R.D., 10 as a professor), for many of them, it is their first. First of four. Some of them are now 1/4 of the way through their freshmen year. That’s 1/16 of the way through college. Seven weeks.

I’m mystified by this thing: seven weeks seems like nothing, like such a small period of time in the grand scheme of things. A blink of an eye. And yet for some of my students, a lot has changed. Some found a major. Others found a new major. Some have found new friends that will last a lifetime. Some have begun to truly find themselves. Some may, without realizing it yet, have even found a future spouse. Some have begun to realize that college is probably not for them–at least right now. Some have found that they should have paid more attention in high school. Some have found God, for the first time in their lives. Some have grown–physically (you’ve heard of the freshman 15; some might be 1/4 of the way there already). Some have found the more interactive environment of college classroom to be liberating and have re-learned their love of learning. At least I hope.

Seven weeks is nothing, really. Especially when you compare it to a lifetime or to eternity. On the other hand, when life-shaping stuff is happening like happens in the first seven weeks of college, seven weeks is everything. Especially when you consider eternity.