Ending the semester

On Friday, I walked a mile through the streets of Philadelphia and caught a train to New York City.  The train stopped under Manhattan, and I walked through a tunnel full of people to catch a subway running uptown.  After an hour under the city, I finally climbed concrete steps into the rain.  Lunch, and a talk, and then I walked back into the subway and under the city and a train carried me out and away into the dark.

Three hours later, exiting another metro station and lugging my laptop to a gray hotel, I glimpsed the Washington monument stretching into the fog of a winter evening, lit like a torch.

These are things that people come to see, said the lights.  Except to you, it is only a little architecture against the skyline to remind you which talk comes next.

This morning, the common final exam began at 7 am.  I left my house just after 5:45 am, and made my way through the dark to my office.  In my building, I hurried around the cleaning staff to and from the printer, to and from the computer.  Why hasn't that TA picked up his exam box yet?  Can I move the proctor in your room to the basement of the Martin classroom building?  Someone found a printing error on form B; please announce it to your students.  We are out of scantrons in the chemistry building.  There isn't enough light in the business auditorium.  My student is ill.  When is the alternate?  And meanwhile, 1500 students sat with pencils in hand and tried to remember, for three hours.

This is how semesters end, in a blaze of light and motion and anxiety, with faculty and students hurtling past the major monuments, the lit torches pointing up into the winter fog.