In my last post I sardonically asked, "Why a fall break?" In my class on "comparative and international higher education" I posed the same question. My students looked at my like I was insane. And they weren't just looking for an excuse to take a break. They seemed genuinely tired, ready for a change of pace.I was being glib, for sure, because I fully recognize that we need to take a break now and then. But I still wonder why we feel we need so many breaks at colleges and universities. I think it might be the intensity of the educational enterprise. To be a student—and professors are merely students that have a license to get paid to study (the Ph.D. or other terminal degree)—is intense. It requires long hours, so long that sometimes you lose track of time and have to stumble out of the library at 2 a.m. But even more so than the hours is that you can't really "turn off" as a professor—you're always thinking about the next project, the next problem, the next class, and, oh yeah, the stack of essays on your desk that need to be graded. And while I'm sure lawyers, business managers, and others who have intense jobs would like these built-in breaks, perhaps the trade-off is the pay. Impecunious professors get long hours, punctuated by the occasional break. The others get better toys to play with on the weekend.
And, in terms of my fall break, it was quite nice. I took my parents on a historical tour of the Horseshoe (oops, I guess that's still kind of work!), Grandma and Grandpa visited Jacob's and Lauren's schools to read to their classes (to rave reviews from their classmates), we took a day trip to Charleston, and generally just relaxed. I took a follow-up quasi-fall break the following weekend, tacking a few days on the front end of my trip to D.C. to drive back to Dear Old State to talk to my Ph.D. advisor (thus the "quasi"), work on a paper with a friend (see, more "quasi"), and hang out with the old gang. We saw "W." (I give it a Gentleman's C+), watched Penn State finally beat Michigan (what a year—both of my alma maters beat Michigan!), and enjoyed the Tina Palin Show.
Oh, and I got to revisit the glory of fall in the North. (See Exhibit A, the photo above that I took in State College.)
