Things I think

* I forget how fast summer semester moves and how long weeks seem in the summer. I was thinking just this morning, "Didn't I get notification of my Doki Doki box being sent like a really long time ago? Should I contact them?" Looked it up: it was sent MONDAY and should arrive today. Monday feels like a really long time ago.

* Still no word on my pay schedule for the summer, so I don't know. I'm not counting on anything more than adjunct pay. (it used to be VERY attractive to teach summers as I think you got paid a bit MORE than you would for a comparable two months' in the regular year. Not any more I guess). Though apparently there is a move afoot to re-instate Pell Grants in the summer - not having Pell Grants (and some other forms of financial aid) available in summer is what has affected our enrollment; it went down for the first time the year that change happened.

so I don't know. I might get sucked back into teaching NEXT summer IF I can be guaranteed big enough classes that I'm not doing it mostly for the joy of feeling that I served the students. My main issue with seeming willing to work for adjunct pay is that you generally should not voluntarily do things you don't want to be forced to do, and I could see some bright light going "Let's just ALWAYS pay adjunct pay for summer/small classes/whatever"

* I was thinking again about the comment a student made on a thank-you note to me: she commented that I was "passionate" about my subject, and I realized something:

There's a fine line between "passionate" and "really geeky" and it might depend on the observer where it falls.(And maybe "really geeky" isn't a bad thing, anyway)

I know, there have been times, even recently, where I felt really weird and "outsider" for being interested in the stuff I am (e.g., glacial landforms, soil invertebrates, dispersal behavior) but at the same time, because I'm interested in that stuff I care about it and I want other people to care. (And really: I do care about everything I teach, it's just there's some stuff I really love and really get into and spend more time on than maybe I need to. Just today I was thinking to myself: why are you teaching them about quaking bogs? Most of these students will never even SEE a quaking bog unless they get an outdoors job somewhere up North where those bogs are, or unless they REALLY get into eco-tourism. But quaking bogs are cool. The fact that extremely well-preserved human remains have turned up in some European bogs is incredibly interesting. So I stand up there in a class really devoted to another topic and pantomime how you can bounce on the mat of a quaking bog, or I talk about the bog bodies.)

And I don't know. Where does being passionate about a topic end and being strangely obsessed by it begin? Again, I suspect it's in the eye of the beholder; I have known a few people down the years who didn't seem to be interested in ANYTHING and were dismissive of stuff other people cared about, and it seemed to me that was kind of a small way to live....I mean, I don't have an interest in Formula 1 racing or shoe design or European football, but I have friends who are, and I'm happy for them they like those things. (I might even be persuaded to sit and watch at least part of a footie match on tv, especially if I can bring my knitting, if I know my friend is really really into it and I want to spend time with them)

* Summer school is kind of lonely. Most people in my department don't teach so they're either off traveling or are out in the field or are just relaxing and I admit I miss not having people around....even if I don't necessarily talk to all of them on any given day. It feels, I don't know, a little end-of-the-world or maybe a little "shop is closing up" to be one of the v. few on campus.

(Also, there have been many, many, "Come to the retirement reception for Person X" e-mails, and also many many e-mails giving away "extra stuff" from offices, some of which are closing. And it's hard not to feel a bit like we are really entering a period of extreme austerity, and that what looked like belt-tightening a few years ago will now look like profligacy. And the whole thing about the New Normal, which I've already gone on record as being suspicious of and disliking the term, because it's a whitewashing term - if it were going to be BETTER in the New Normal, they'd call it "Improvement" instead. New Normal is like, "Here's a giant horse pill you have to take every day to stay alive. Yes, it will stick in your throat and give you indigestion and leave a foul taste in your mouth, but you must take it")

* Random thought (while proctoring short test this morning) for a fanfiction story I might never write: the idea that "Princesses" in Equestria are essentially ageless and immortal (barring catastrophic injury) while on the throne, but once they find a successor, they are able to become mortal - to shape-shift into a form different from what they had, to give up most or all of their memories of their time as royalty, to enter into the "simple" world of "simple" ponies: to marry, if they desire, and have foals. To work at an ordinary job. To age and eventually die. And the thing is - rather than being seen as a demotion or a punishment, it is seen as a welcome respite, as a return to the normal functioning of things. (Would an eternal being, on something like Earth where everything else passes away, grow tired of being eternal? I think so). And so, Celestia and Luna, walking away from Twilight and Cadence's coronation to be the new Princesses of Day and of Night, plan for their eventual future as simple, mortal ponies with no recollection of who they used to be.

(A couple of added furbelows: Cadence is free to take on Luna's role because her daughter has grown to the point of being able to be a nominal ruler, AND the Crystal Empire voted itself a Republic, with a Prime Minister and other functionaries to do the day-to-day ruling, and the Princess is merely a figurehead)

Also, there'd have to be some kind of mass forgetting on the part of the mortal ponies. Or maybe not - maybe they know their Princesses stepped down, but they don't know who they "became," and so there's always that question: could the young mother next door to you have been one of the Princesses? Could the shopkeeper once have raised the sun every morning or been banished to the moon? I'm not sure I could quite get the right nostalgic/elegiac and yet hopeful tone a story like that would need.

This was slightly inspired by an interesting fanfic I read the other day: The End of Enlightenment. Yet another proposed Derpy backstory, sort of an interesting one and one I don't find at all unattractive: she was once Mnemnosyne, one of the two Reaper ponies (the other one being Lethe). Some ponies, at the moment of death, see only Lethe, and their soul goes on to the afterlife, with them forgetting everything they experienced. A few are given the choice: forget or remember (they can see both). Mnemnosyne is so touched by an instance where she has to "take" a young foal (who can see her, and who "chooses" her - and what memories a foal might have to carry on to the afterlife? Hopefully being warm, being well-fed, being held by those who love her....) Anyway, Mnemnosyne somehow conspires to become pregnant, which is apparently Forbidden....and so she is transformed into the wall-eyed pony no one really knows much about. But who just BARELY remembers her "sister".....it's an interesting and slightly sad story.

(My own personal backstory for her, since everyone gets to have one, apparently? Her name is actually Dr. Penelope Hooves, and she is a scientist. Her name came when the visiting child of a colleague misread the "Dr. P. Hooves" nameplate on her door. She works at some kind of super-secret facility, so needs to keep a low profile. Luckily, she has a silly-sounding voice and bad eyesight and is slightly socially awkward. In the lab, she "fixes" her eyes with heavy goggles that are uncomfortable so she only wears them when she needs good, clear vision in the lab.....outside the lab, everypony just sees her crazy eyes and silly voice and social awkwardness and assume she's "lesser than." The only ones who know the truth, outside her colleagues, are Dr. Whooves (who is himself a time and space traveler, with his own secrets to keep) and her much-younger sister Dinky, who lives with her. I know most fanfic has Dinky as her daughter, but I prefer the idea of "younger sister." And Dinky lives with her because the schools are better in Ponyville, and also their parents are involved in some super-secret and dangerous stuff ("On Their Majesties' Secret Service," maybe?) so Dinky is safer with Derpy....and anyway, she can help her sister out with her vision problems.)