"Why are we here?"
When my student asked the question this morning, he was not introducing a metaphysical exploration into the meaning of life. Rather, it was a practical question: Why are we here having class when everyone else is off having picnics?
"It's Labor Day," I said. "We labor."
But it is a legitimate question: on a campus bulging with really smart people, why can no one figure out how to put a Monday holiday into the academic calendar? My two children are split on this--one has classes today and the other does not--but the one who has the day off illustrates the problem: since her classes started last Tuesday and she has no classes today, she'll be three weeks into the semester before her Monday classes ever get a chance to meet.
On my campus we have a number of labs and a few evening classes that meet only on Mondays, so a Monday holiday means a week's worth of missed work. But surely other colleges figure out how to avoid this problem, so why can't we?
Some people have the day off: the secretaries and janitors and other support service employees are enjoying their family picnics today, which means we're having classes in buildings that haven't been cleaned since Friday. But because that's the way it's always been done and because no one is sufficiently motivated to find a solution, the rest of us labor on Labor Day.
And that's why we're here. Next question?
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