Monday, August 21, 2006

Campus Education Week (And that's the polite term for it)

Education Week started on campus. That means instead of lots of kids walking around, you have lots of adults walking around (am I implying that college students are not adults?), and none of them know exactly where they are going. It used to be that the HP World conference was the week of Education week, but that conference is dead, buried and forgotten now, so I'm here on campus. Well, not exactly. Our office is just off campus, away from the fray, so we are a little isolated from it. Just don't eat on campus or anywhere near it.

I said there were lots of people walking around lost. There are also lots of people in cars going around lost. Walking from Kate's school to my office (through campus, about a mile total), I cross 4 streets (at lights of course). This morning I was nearly hit twice. One was someone who really needed to turn left, and just couldn't wait until I got fully across the street. The other was an old guy who just either didn't see the light or notice it was red. Interesting times.

I only got stopped twice for directions, so that's a step up from normal. There are students all over town with nothing to do for 2 weeks, until the semester starts again, why can't they pay them $100 for the week to sit at every bench on campus with an information sign? Walk right up to the info guy with confidence that he can get you where you need to go, then you don't have to ask 5 different people in the course of a half mile. People could always get where they are going in that event... (Maybe there are reasons. They didn't ask me for my input, really.)

Anyway, it's not all bad. Tara usually goes with her Mom, they enjoy it, but for some reason, the last couple of years it has been on the same week that school starts here. They weren't able to go to anything this week but the play.

I'll just stay holed up in my office until it's over.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They do employ probably 30 or 40 students, maybe more just to drive around campus, give "more needy" people rides and provide directions. They also have people standing at each of the route stops to provide directions from like 9 to 7 each day. Besides paid people, Ed Week gets hundreds of volunteers to stand in all of the buildings to give directions and help people. I've done both (the first was pretty good money although fairly intensive--you had to commit to pretty much 8 hour shift every day all week--and it was a little boring). Anyway, maybe that's why you only ran into 2 people that were lost, there's always at least 2 uninformed people in the several thousand that attend
Tara