Summer!...summer?

Summer's here! We in the education industry often measure our seasons according to the academic calendar. For me, summer always starts when classes stop at the end of the academic year. That happened last Friday. Here, though, they do draw out the final exams, so that they take three weeks, as opposed to the usual one in the US. That's more of a pain for me, as I like to get the grading done quickly. But it is more civilized for the students.

In general, the job is very civilized in that sense. I'm starting to think of it as a form of bribery, in fact. Our terms are 14 weeks long, but that includes a two-week mid-term (spring and fall) break. Plus it's a light teaching load--three courses per year. The practical upshot of all of this is that my summer is lasting from Oct. 6 to March 1--almost 5 months. And then next term I'm only teaching one class that meets once per week (for 3 hours), so I'm essentially teaching only one class for the next 9 months. Lots of time for research. I have to admit, I am missing teaching, at least a certain kind of teaching, namely the lower-mid level undergrad course with roughly 25 students. I think that's actually a great kind of class, but here I've only been teaching either 100+ intro lectures (which I'm liking too, but it's a different kind of thing) or grad seminars.

Anyway, summer's here...except the shortened academic year makes it not feel like summer at all. It's still early spring, roughly the equivalent of early April in the US. It feels a lot like early April in Portland many days--rainy, in the high 50's or low 60's. I still haven't seen it crack 70 more than once, actually. One of the tough things about moving to the southern hemisphere when I did is that you also miss the US summer. So I haven't had a real summer for 13 months and counting. And then I go to the US in November, to continue my Endless Non-Summer. It'll be nice to get back at the end of that just for the weather. Thankfully, though, I did move from LA, where even the rainiest winter on record felt like summer, with about 3 weeks of spring sprinkled in there.