Ahhh….UBC in the spring.
Cherry trees blooming, magnolias in full dress, buds coming up everywhere. Grass being mowed. Anxiety riddled students coming and going between exams.
And that’s why I am here today.
The final exam for my fish health course was scheduled for 8:30am today.
70% writing with me in a lecture hall in Woodward Building, IRC5. I spent a lot of time in lectures in this building. The most traumatic of which was definitely third year genetics.
The other 30%?
Writing with accommodation services somewhere else. Each provided time and a half for various reasons.
After the exam I collected the tests, chatted with one or two of them about fish health and aquaculture related topics, and then wandered across campus to see if there was any remote possibility that I might be able to get my hands on those other exams if I stuck around until 2:30pm.
Nope.
Could they perhaps mail them to me since I can’t get back to campus until a week from now?
Nope.
How about scanning the exams and emailing them to me?
Nope.
Dammit!
I have a fairly late in the term exam, and I know some of these students are graduating and need the grades to be entered into the system asap. I can’t do that if I can’t actually get the exams.
I am an anomaly. An adjunct professor that teaches online but has a traditional paper exam that I invigilate. It complicates things, btu I have my reasons for doing it this way. It just always gets complicated with the increasing number of accommodated students.
As I was trying to sort things out I received an email from the office of the Dean of my Faculty, an exam that one student had written yesterday had arrived and was available for me to pick up. I’d tried to see if someone in my faculty could help me out by mailing the exams or scanning them, but with the number of exams being accommodated, scanning seemed more costly than mailing them….but they weren’t doing the math the way I was apparently. But I hadn’t gone straight to the Dean’s office. Worth a shot.
On the way back across campus I took a side trip into Zoology to see if anyone I knew was about. Colin? Nope. Then I heard a familiar voice down the hall…ahhh, Trish was around. A great chat with her before heading on and out…with a brief visit with Chris. A few hugs, some chatting, and off to Land and Food Systems to retireve the one exam and successfully gain traction to have the ones that will show up on Monday popped into an envelope and sent directly to me.
I may just have a chance to get those exams marked and final grades entered before the deadline.
On the way out I took a quick trip down the halls of the building that housed the offices and labs that I spent more than a decade completing two graduate degrees in.
I turned a corner and a woman was bent over in the middle of the hallway, tying her shoelace.
I quipped….”Seems like a good opportunity for a hip check”
Without looking up she said “What?”
I replied “It will be funnier when you look up.”
She finished tying her shoe and straightened up. At first there was a look of annoyance on her face, and that quickly changed to confusion, recognition, and then her face split into the biggest smile and that was followed by arms flung wide and a huge hug that coincided with a loud “Oh hey…it’s YOU!!!!”
Syliva.
I try to swing by her office every time I am on campus.
She was…IS… such a lovely person and she was so supportive thought the years I wandered these halls. Not a prof. More important. She was…IS…a technician in the faculty and manages all the orders that everyone makes.
For years I’ve dropped in and we’ve chatted for an hour or more at a time. She keeps telling me she’s going to retire “next year”. And she is still here. Getting closer though. We had a chat about how when life stops being fun, it’s time to change gears. She’s been here for over 40 years. I first arrived 32 years ago. And she is the person I make the effort to come and visit at least once a year. She’s that important to me.
Whenever I come to this campus I have bittersweet emotions. It was a time of stress and struggle, but when I look back, it was a time of happiness. I had amazing labmates. I worked around amazingly dedicated staff and faculty. And I enjoyed a time that afforded the luxury to follow curiosity and learn about how biological systems worked. People asked questions that didn’t have agendas. They wanted to “know” and “understand”.
Sometimes I really miss that type of an environment.
If nothing else, I am grateful to have managed to experience it, and to be able to come back and still connect with a few really great people on campus.
And now I have another stack of exams to grade.
Oh, the pee with or without friends photo?
That was in a washroom in Zoology and just made me laugh out loud when I turned around to lock the door behind me.
Definitely no friends, thank you.
Sure, the magnolia shot against the tower clock is the better photo, but the friends vs one made me smile more. So that one gets my photo of the day winner.