Lunch = Love

Today was my annual "Congratulations, you survived the semester!" lunch for my student advisees. Yesterday one of the newer students, Chris, said behind my back that he felt bad about me treating them all to lunch. Unfortunately he said this to Ellie, so of course I heard about it immediately, because that's just how it goes. I told him, "You just have to accept that I'm an emotionally stunted human being and that buying people lunch is how I express love." Most of my students have gotten used to this particular quirk of mine -- lunch for the whole gang once a semester, and if anyone needs a little extra love and encouragement, they get taken to lunch once in awhile. Sadly Chris wasn't there today...he said he was sick, but maybe he was just rejecting my love! Fortunately, I'm not so emotionally stunted that I worry about stuff like that.

Anyway, I had the whole gang to the all-you-can eat buffet at Pizza Experts...picture of them all above, except for Vince who took so long in the washroom I got tired of waiting for him to come back and snapped the picture. Here's a picture of Vince saying, "Why didn't you wait for me to be in the group shot?" (Vince, who is a juggler and plans to go to circus school, wanted me to take pictures of him balancing ketchup and vinegar bottles on his forehead, but I said I wasn't going to encourage that kind of behavior by photographing it).

The best part of the day was seeing the three students who are no longer with us this semester -- Touria and Vanette, who graduated in January, and Paul, who beat the system by getting accepted to MUN as a mature student without finishing all his high school courses. The last pic, below is of Paul, me, and Ellie; if it had a title I would call it simply, "Irreplaceable." Before Paul left last semester he used to frequently ask who I was going to find to be his "replacement" but I assured him some people in our lives simply aren't replaceable.

This has been my busy week at work with new courses starting and new students coming in. I enjoy the challenge of getting to know new students and forming new relationships -- but it's true, the old ones really aren't replaceable; every one is unique and I love them all (even if I have to take them to lunch instead of actually saying it!)

In other news, we had a genuine snow day this week; school closed on Wednesday (so I guess it wasn't such a busy week!) with 10-15 cm of snow. There's another 20-30 predicted tonight (such a waste, for it to come on a weekend!) and I am enjoying lots of those classic evenings curled up by the fire that I like so much. Still not enjoying the going-outside part of winter that much!

I've updated my book reviews at Compulsive Overreader with a couple of new ones -- go check it out!