It begins

All things have rhythm, even chronically unhip white boys. My job has a rhythm, and things are on a build up to the annual crescendo. Five weeks of training kicks off tomorrow, and it will all culminate in the arrival of over seven thousand new and returning college students moving into thirty-seven buildings in about 48 hours. Over the next 35 days I will help coordinate the education of 250 student staff. They will occupy over two dozen class rooms and consume over $40,000 worth of cafeteria & catered food.

The point of these frightening numbers is that for the next five weeks I'll effectively cease to exist as Jonathan separate from my identity as an educator and employee of the University. I've been forcing myself to leave the office no later than 7 p.m. this past week, but its a goal that will get set further and further back as that moment of reckoning known as opening looms closer. Bring on RA training and my job will run literally from 7 in the morning until 1 a.m. the next morning or later. The excitement is so thick in the air around that time that I could cut it with a knife. That is assuming you'd trust me to hold a sharp object after not sleeping for a couple of weeks.

So I am not being distant or rude if I do not respond to your messages in a timely fashion. School starts here at Carolina on August 30. I'll look forward to seeing my friends and family again right around that time. Until then, bon voyage!