I hurt my arm the other day.

Nothing serious or CHWS-worthy, but it was rather embarrassing. Ungraceful as my reaction was, I hold no ill will toward whoever lubricated the stairs. Instead, I have decided to respond in the most reasonable way possible: immortalizing the incident on the internet.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how tattered people around here are starting to look. It’s like when a long-distance racer is dashing the last hundred meters to the finish line. As impressive as the feat of getting there was, they certainly don’t look dignified doing it. In this case, people are doing less sweating and flailing and more shoving their faces into books and chugging coffee, but the principle is the same. Finals week looms closer and closer each day, and many grades will be made or broken before the semester is over.

“I wish I were a freshman again,” a friend of mine said to me in the Cellar, my arrival signaling a short break in his studying. I helpfully reminded him that that would just mean he’d have to do everything over again, but that somehow didn’t improve his morale.

My best wishes go out to the tutors at the Center For Writing, Learning, and Teaching, who are stepping up to work overtime in a number of studying and writing events within the next week even as they have their own final tests and assignments. However much help we need, give or receive, we shall all soon stumble out of this semester, panting, but smarter than we were before.

Even now, we can see that the holidays are coming. At work today we took some time out of our day to decorate the office; tiered lights and suspended snowflakes signaling the festive month that is nearly upon us.