The new year's first day of classes (sort of)

Today being the first day classes resume at university, I got up early with the intention of arriving at my office early. I wanted to make some last minute changes on the lecture slides I would be using for my 8am lecture.

I was however puzzled to find the parking lot near my office building nearly deserted as I drove up around 7:40am. The jeepneys that usually wait for passengers were not around and there were just two other cars one of which I recognized as belonging to our director who is always early at work. I also noticed that there were no cars parked either at nearby buildings. I couldn't see any students or other instructors milling around or walking through the building's corridors either.

Dismissing this as due to the early hour and it being the very first day of classes of the new year, I walked over to the building carrying my bags after parking my car at the far end of the parking lot under some trees. As I entered the first floor lobby I met a colleague (owner of the other car I saw parked at the parking lot) whom I immediately greeted happy new year.

He likewise hello then asked, "Alam mo ba na walang klase ngayon?" (Do you know that there are no classes today?) I was stunned and managed to asked, "What?!" It turns out that the university chancellor had declared on the last day of classes last year that there would be no classes today to give students more time to travel back to town! My colleague who has his own 7am lecture class on Wednesdays wasn't aware of that announcement either. He was informed about it by the college dean only that very morning through a text message. No wonder there weren't any students around at all! There may have been no official memo but this kind of news spreads like wildfire among students. But I wish some kind of official announcement had been posted on the university's website to at least let the rest of us know about it.

Anyway, after having a good laugh over our situation I excused myself and walked on to my office room. As I settled down to work, I realized that my lecture/lab schedule has been messed up a bit once again because of having to miss today's lectures. I was however slightly relieved that I at least now had the entire day to edit my lecture slides and other teaching materials as well as catch up a bit on other work that I had set aside to thoroughly enjoy my Christmas vacation. There was just a small glitch though later when I discovered that our Internet connection was down. While that meant that there will be less to distract me from my work, I was bereft of my main source for teaching materials. So I wasn't able to do as much work as I hoped to.

But the main good thing about not having classes today was that I had at least a day to adjust from vacation mode back to working mode.