Yep, that's me. With a goofy grin on my face.
Earlier this semester, I let time slip away from me and was 25 minutes late to class. My class. The one I teach.
It was a weird experience. The campus seemed deserted, even though it was a very pleasant Fall day. When I got into the Classroom Building (Really! We have a building named "Classroom Building" here) I noticed that the halls were nearly deserted. It was 2:20 in the afternoon and there should have been students and faculty scurrying about as classes let out and before the next classes began.
Something was wrong. My first thought was that somebody had pulled the fire alarm and everybody was outside waiting for the all-clear. But there weren't that many people outside as I had approached the building.
I made it upstairs to my classroom, noting other classes were filled as I walked down the hall.
Then I walked into my classroom, looking at my watch and noticing that it was not quite 2:30pm.
Hold the phone! 2:30!?!?! This was my day for my 2:00 class, not 2:30!
Of course, nobody waited around long enough to see if I was going to show up. I don't blame them. I was a student once and there was a kind of rule of thumb that you only stick around so many minutes if the professor was late and then assume he (or she - but for some reason it was never a she in my case) was not going to show up, then leave.
I could insert an excuse like "but then my Astrid app was bought out by Yahoo and dumped so my favorite to-do app that kept me on time for everything was no more," but I won't use that as an excuse.
I vowed to not let it happen again.
Fast forward to today - the end of the semester.
I was gleefully filling my little Christmas bucket (it's okay to mention Christmas on the Cyberwebs, right?) with candy canes to hand out in class today. It's the last day of my class for these students, and, being Dead Week at OSU, the only new material I had for them was candy.
Then I decided to put my Christmas Ducky bow tie on, so I went down the hall from my office to the restroom to make sure the tie was reasonable straight.
I came back to my office, where I had Christmas music playing on my Kindle Fire and I saw a post online that the Annual Stillwater Christmas Parade was canceled. What?!
After the shock wore off (I mean, they've held the parade in colder weather and when it was actually snowing!), I put my bucket in my backpack, grabbed my textbook, and went to class, blissfully unaware of the time.
I walked outside into the late Fall crispy cold air and noticed that there weren't very many people out and about. But it was a pretty chilly day.
I think I counted about three dozen snowflakes blowing around before I reached the Classroom Building. Certainly not enough to cancel a parade. Yeah, I'm a grown-up, but I still love parades!
Deja vu struck as I noticed the halls of the Classroom Building were noticeably empty. I walked up the stairs to the third floor and glanced at my watch - 2:25pm. Not a problem.
Whoops! It's Thursday. I am late for my 2:00 class. Again.
I chuckled as I walked into the empty room. I wrote an apology on the class web page, and uploaded my final PowerPoint presentation - three slides, wishing them good luck and congratulations to those graduating this Fall.
Apparently I don't always learn from my mistakes.
But I have plenty of candy canes. And a Ducky bow tie.
