Posts tagged with summer.
It's the last day of school - here come lip synching and ice cream trucks
It's the last day of school here at UBC (as I write this anyway. These posts go into a sort of editorial vortex from which they emerge - always unscathed - the next day.) Despite the fact that a gravid black cloud hangs over campus and threatens to soak all the students that have gathered at McInnes Field for the year-end block party, the atmosphere is still electric.
Impromptu barbecues have sprung up on any available grassy surface on campus, the usually long coffee shop lines have been replaced by snaking queues at the liquor store, and whereas UBC's grounds are typically dotted with purposeful-looking individuals doggedly trekking through the rain to the next class, today they're being lazily criss-crossed by roving groups of jubilant friends looking for the next party.
All this and it's only noon.
The end of the school year has always been one of my favourite times on campus. As an undergrad, the last day of classes marked the beginning of a summer's worth of freedom, pregnant with promise. Even now, as someone for whom that promise is just another day of meetings and repeated visits to the coffee machine, it still carries with it a palpable air of excitement.
Sure, part of that is due to the fact that come tomorrow lunch lines will be 90% shorter, the no-longer-overcrowded bus won't smell so much like hot, wet dog-umbrella when it rains, and driving across campus won't mean stopping for ten minutes to let Moses lead his Exodus across the crosswalk.
Mostly, though, it's because once the undergrads have left for their summer jobs, for their hometowns, and for their European backpacking adventures, the faculty and staff that are left behind pull a Tom Cruise in Risky Business. With no one to answer to, it's pants-less lip-synching from now 'til September, baby.
Although to undergrads it might seem as if they're here to serve us, with our ceaseless demands for essays, mandatory lab attendance, and tricky exam questions, for faculty members it's quite the opposite. Although our own research is a huge component of what we do, our teaching and our service to the university community is of equal, if not greater, importance.
Thus when summer rolls around and we find ourselves free from teaching obligations, from office hours, and from constantly striving to give the impression of Nobel-worthy genius, it's like coming home on a Friday to find a note from your parents saying they're gone for the weekend and there's beer in the fridge.
Gone are the monthly symposia, the weekly seminars, and the near-daily meetings in dusty, dimly-lit cubbies. In their place, extended barbecue lunches with the lab, conference travel to exotic destinations, and meetings that progress from sunny patio to sunny patio. Our department even brings in an ice cream truck once every summer to dispense free treats outside the building (an event which proves that no matter how old you are, the instinct to beat a hasty path to the sidewalk when you hear the first few notes of "Turkey in the Straw" never, ever diminishes.)
After a few months of relaxation, though, one starts to miss the vibrant hum of a campus filled with students. Thus when mid-August brings the first stirrings of student life, we are reminded that the few weeks before the first day of classes are just as exciting as this, the last day.
Of course, the excitement quickly fades upon realizing - while standing in a 50 person-deep Tim Horton's line - that although the students remain the same age, we get older and older and that the dog-umbrella smell is only a rainfall away.
Nonetheless, have a great summer undergrads, and if you happen to wander back onto campus before September, don't be surprised if you see me singing Bob Seger into my free ice cream.
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JENNIFER GARDY 
