Going to Read AP Exams in Lincoln

Written at: 5:30 PM MT 6/11/08

So I finished my last final today. Well it really wasn’t a “final” – it was at 8 AM, I brought donuts and I asked my students to fill out an evaluation form for the class. And now I am at the Boise airport waiting to board a flight to Omaha to begin grading AP Chemistry exams. This isn’t really the start of my sabbatical, but it feels a lot like it: my school-time schedule has ended and I am going to Nebraska. I have already arranged for two appointments with property management companies in Lincoln to see two furnished apartments that I could potentially rent for my sabbatical. I’m really excited about one of them, at least according to the website it looks exactly like what I want. I’ll upload some pictures once I actually see them.

It is strange, but I am actually starting to feel a bit of homesickness, even though I have never really considered La Grande to be “home”. I’m finally at the place where I am saying goodbye to students that I will not see again, some for over a year, others never again. It really should be no different than graduation time for any other year, since then too I say goodbye to students that I will never see again either. But this somehow is different. Maybe it is because, this time, the choice to leave is mine. I will definitely miss working with my research students, especially Wade. Wade is an absolutely stellar student, I am proud to have him doing research with me and it pains me that he will be taking physical chemistry from someone else, the year that I won’t be there. Not that I think he would do poorly with someone else – he will do great, I’m sure – but that I won’t have the pleasure of teaching him the subject about which I feel the most passion. He is perhaps the one student who could persuade me not to take the sabbatical after all. The saving grace is that he will be there when I get back and I will get one more year to work with him – that is, if everything goes well. Who knows, he may have transferred away by time I get back and then the moment will be lost.

Hmm – they just called my name at the gate and I received the bonus-leg-room upgrade (e.g., exit row seating). This trip started out with an inauspicious start – I dropped papers in the mud, got lost going to the Boise mall trying to buy a book, couldn’t find a parking spot at the airport for the longest time – but maybe it won’t be so bad after all. Plus I just ran into a former student, Brian Byrne, who is finishing up medical school at UW and is traveling on this same flight. Small world indeed.

Well I am going to change seats, the guy next to me has a very loud iPod and very smelly fabric softener emanating from his clothes (I am allergic to fabric softener). I will upload this blog entry when I get a chance.