The First Week of School

I know that some of you will want some help in describing the first week of school, so I'm here to give you a hand.

Let's start with the building. The building is beautiful. It still looks kind of like a conference center, albeit a conference center for small people carrying books around and cramming lots of stuff into little metal compartments. I think that will change over time, though it may take longer than we'd expect, given the administration's insistence on keeping it clean. We'll see. The laws of nature are pretty insistent on everything approaching a state of entropy, or complete disorder, but at least we can try.

For me personally, there are a few things that stick out. First, my office is on the ground floor, which is arguable a basement but I won't quibble. Most of my classes are on the 3rd floor. There's an elevator but I refuse to use it, and I am already developing quads of steel. Our department head had the inspiration to refuse to have our room carpeted, which makes my nice new chair with wheels much more fun than I would have anticipated. There's a large gap in the wall that separates my desk from the guidance office, but I haven't heard anything exciting yet.

The door to our office is always locked and they installed the lock wrong so you can't unlock it. So they took the glass pane out of the door and if the door is closed you have to reach through and open it with the inside handle. There are a few classrooms like that. Apparently they installed the cylinders upside down. Now I know all you math people will say, "How can you install a cylinder upside down? That's like saying you drew a circle upside down. It's symmetrical." I don't know, it's a mystery.

The biggest complaint I've heard so far is that the building is big and spacious, but the classrooms are cramped. I guess that's kind of true, but I don't think it's anything that you can't get used to. I really like the rooms that have 2 doors. It adds an element of surprise to things.

The other complaint is that there's a walk between the 2 buildings. I don't think this is unique to the school. In most cases, if there's two separate buildings you must walk to get from one to the other. It's not a long walk, but it's not a short walk either. We have a bunch of umbrellas, but sometimes, if there are lots of people in transit, one building or the other runs out and students are late because they're waiting for an umbrella. I know there's a oke here but I can't put my finger on it. As for finding a way to get the students from one building to the other more quickly, my first suggestion would be to use pressurized pneumatic tubes, like they use at the drive-in tellers. This is how the first subway in New York operated. Huge fans created air pressure to move the trains. (No, I'm not making this up). If that's not practical, a moving sidewalk will do.

People are concerned because kids aren't staying on the crosswalks. This suggests to me that the crosswalks are not placed correctly. Especially in inclement weather, people will always choose the shortest distance to walk. If the crosswalk isn't there, they won't stay on the crosswalk. Some of you may have heard me mention that when the University of California built their new campus in Santa Cruz. At UCSC, home of the Banana Slugs, (not making that one up either. Photo here), they build no paths the fist year. They waited to see where the students walked across the grass and built the paths there.