At the Compound We Have Spring Break Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Some Replies to Big Thirsty.

• On my spring break I'm going to: freebase crack cocaine while listening to my Garden State soundtrack, skinny dip in your parents’ pool when they're asleep, and input your email address into gay porn websites. You know, the usual.


• As a response to this week's Big Thirsty, I would like to share my typical Spring Beak. A few colleagues and I go to a conference in Ireland (we go to a bar named O'Hanrahan's). Sometimes, we arrange funding for a grad student or two to attend (we buy the first round). The keynote speaker at this convention is Professor Jack Daniels of Old No. 7 University in Tennessee. I'm especially excited this year because Dr. Johnny Walker of the University of Kilmarnock is going to discuss the visible color spectrum (focusing mostly on the difference between red and black, but also the blue and green labels... err, spectrums). Also, I should have time to get reacquainted with my old college chum Pierre Smirnoff. We spent many a cold night together in our dorm room trying to get that 15-page paper done. Good times....It's tough to work (drink) so hard but, hey, I love what I do (if the mild euphoria of drunkenness counts as "love"), so I'm will to put in the extra effort. If you'll excuse me, the next session is about to begin and I really need to use the bathroom before hearing Dr. Beam's presentation.


• I wake up bereft of joy and happiness, because I know no student will be coming around unannounced to my office that day, requesting a grade bump from a B to an A+ in order to get into dental school - a request to which my standard reply is "NEVER! I crush you like bug! Bwha-ha-ha-HA! Now, get out!" God, I get a huge rush from doing that.


• I take this opportunity to drive fast on the highway, snort PowerAde through a straw, get my crazzies out while not having to spend a moment thinking about you. Oh, and I eat Klondike bars as if it were my last meal, and I reveal the whiteness of my belly to the sun for the first time since September. Oh, and I take your essays to my local bar and show them to people. We all need a laugh, after all.


• I, for one, schedule my papers to be due after spring break because I don’t want to spend spring break reading papers. I want to spend spring break drinking margaritas and partying with las senoritas in Cancun. Unfortunately, I’m old and lame and therefore I will probably spend spring break doing research for and writing my next astonishingly boring article to submit to academic journals so that I can keep my job. That’s sort of more important to me than your hedonism.


• I sit around on my fat ass eating truffles (of both the mushroom and chocolate varieties), pounding single-malt whiskey, and catching up on episodes of "House" and "Grey's Anatomy!" I mean, don't we all?


• Since most of our students have spend the term drinking too much and sleeping it off the next morning (during class time), we take this as our opportunity to do the same.
  Some of us will get together to discuss you, our delightful students. Mostly we share stories of the battle this term, such as the student who said "I'm too smart to get an A in this class," or "I failed this class last time because I was really bored."


• Spring break? Oh, do you refer to that week I spend buried under piles of administrative bullshit, grading, managing the affairs of my out-of-state aged mother, and trying to figure out how the hell my family can get through the summer without paychecks?


• Some of us drink copious amounts of alcohol. Not the Busch Light swill you’re used to drinking but real beer and hard liquor. We need it. A week away from some of you snowflakes is a like a week WITH sunshine. Oh yeah. We’re also writing those exams you won’t be studying for while you’re on break. Some of us even give exams just before the break so you don’t leave 3 or 4 days early to extend your break. Anything we can do to inconvenience you is fine by us.


• We catch up on school work, research, doctor's appointments, home maintenance, car repairs, and errands; every now and then, we may even get to work in that golf and a beer. Or television and chocolate. Or whatever. But, rest assured, we're not thinking about you.


• I catch up on my task of writing horrible reviews of my colleagues on ratemyprofessor.com, and giving myself glowing reviews.


• Like, you know, we ‘proffies’ do like other, you know, required stuff, like writing articles and like submitting grants and stuff you know, so that we can keep our jobs, you know. Maybe spend, you know, some quality time with the kids, who like are also on spring break. Or maybe we like spend some time, you know, plotting to make students’ life a living hell, you know, because that is what we do, just think about students all the time, you know. And uh, that’s like why like I made sure the university scheduled my final exam for like 7 am, just to piss you off. Or that is why I made sure that like the department made this women’s class like required, just to, you know piss you off so you can sit in class, like glaring at me the whole time and like making hostile remarks. So that is pretty much like what I do over break, yea, that and my weed whacker…cool.


• Most of us junior folks spend summer, winter and spring "breaks" working on what we don't have time to do during the semester--our writing and research. You know, the stuff we need to do to get tenure (and which some of us enjoy more than doing the daily song-and-dance for the zombies who populate our classrooms)? But, hey, thanks for asking! Think of me, will you, when you're sucking tequila off some dude's/dudette's rock-hard abs!


• I have the time to finish making my voodoo-doll of you and go to a sewing supply shop to buy those big-ass sewing needles to repeatedly skewer up your voodoo-doll rectum.