It’s rapidly approaching that time again, when stress levels start to rise, and students start to wander the hallways with increasingly panicked looks on their faces. Men will start cultivating woefully neglected facial hair faster than you can say “David Suzuki!”, and the younger students will quickly adopt a kind of rictus of horror as they realize that this just isn’t high school anymore.

Yep, it’s end of semester time for my students, and I’m slowly burning out along with them. If I could grow facial hair without it looking like a handful of pitifully kinked strands (did I mention David Suzuki?), I’d be sprouting some of the most swankadelic pubs on my face that you ever saw.

As it is, I sometimes catch myself walking from my desk to class with the sound of steam whistling from a kettle escaping from my clenched lips, and have to pull a Scooby Doo shake and “huh?” to get myself back in order.

Yes. School is stressful.

It doesn’t help that the environment around work these days is becoming even more politicized. I won’t go into details, less I suddenly find myself waking up with lead boots and a large melon crammed into my mouth, but it really does boggle the mind how accurate Dilbert is, PHB’s and all. Yes, it really does.