Why You Should Not Be Working Today

Back in my college days at Auburn University, I took an ADA class as an elective.  The computer science professor, Dr. Phillips, was a man of much wisdom.  I still recall two bits of wisdom he passed on to the class. 

 

The first piece of knowledge or rather advice, was why we should all learn to weld.  That is another story which I will save for another time.

 

The second piece of wisdom started as a rant.  A student asked Dr. Phillips if class would be canceled for Wednesday morning, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  The student suggested that it should be because all the afternoon classes had been canceled.  Afternoon classes were typically canceled so that students would have time to travel home for the turkey holiday.

 

"Follow me, follow me, follow me, follow me."  Sometimes I can't help but to quote Snoop Dogg.

 

Dr. Phillips rationalized that most students were not morning people so the 10:00 am ADA class was the first class of the day for most folks.  If afternoon classes had already been canceled, there was a good chance it was only his class holding folks back from starting home on Tuesday afternoon.  If he were to cancel his class, we could all go home on Tuesday afternoon.  How joyous our collective parents would be to see us home from school early.

 

Everyone knows that computer engineering and computer science students only have labs on Tuesdays and Thursdays and God knows we don't actually do anything in them.  Odds are we were all in the middle of a project and it would just be a work period anyway.  Surely you could make up this time later, after all, isn't it also common knowledge that lab assignments don't actually get started on til the night before they are due.  Well it turns out that we can all go home Monday afternoon.

 

Monday afternoon.  Not much point in waiting til Monday afternoon to head home.  Most folks are going to skip their first few classes Monday morning, probably due to a hangover.  By the time they are sentient  enough to head to class, odds are the schedule for the day is replete.  Obviously there is no point to staying in town all weekend to inevitably skip all your Monday classes anyway.  We might as well head on home Friday afternoon.

 

You should see the pattern by now.  Obviously if we rationalize away a short week of classes, we can do the same for a long week of classes.  Here is how you do it.  Everyone and I mean everyone is going to skip their classes on Friday.  The reasons may vary but the results are the same:  the classrooms are completely empty on Friday afternoons and mostly so on Friday mornings.  What is the point?  And Thursday?  Well Thursdays are just like Tuesday, labs and all.  No point there either.  So we have now effectively shortened any long week to the equivalent of a short holiday week and you know how it works from there.

 

It should now be obvious why we can all skip Thanksgiving week and the week before that.  And it only takes three more of those weeks to account for a whole month, and ten of those weeks to account for a quarter.  It is obvious that those bothering to sign up for classes have good intentions so by signing up, and paying the tuition bill, we deserve good marks and a little time off.  And if we can skip one quarter, why not 12, or more accurately 15, because no one finishes school in 4 years anymore.

 

Now lets take that same reasoning and apply it to our post-undergraduate career.  Just send me my social security check already and take the rest of the week off.