Plan/wish.

Right about now, I would like to skip over the part where we orchestrate the exit strategy of all the classes. Students would have turned in their final projects and exams, and the halls at school would be quiet. There would be no more events and all the meetings of the semester would be completed, the minutes taken, the action items nestled into their little bulleted lists.

Pies, Pies, Pies. (Wayne Thiebaud)

I would be happily grading. There would be a Christmas tree and it would be lit. I would have a warm beverage and I would be happily grading. When I had completed, happily, a swath of grading, I would bake something. Like, perhaps, a pie. Perhaps several pies. After the grading was entirely completed, I would bake so many pies that I would have become, in point of fact, a pie baker, a baker of pies. I would bake pies of all kinds and I would deliver them to people. After I had baked a zillion pies and delivered them to a zillion houses, I would open a shop. Or maybe I would start a pie blog. Either way, the endgame would be a cookbook, that I would sell on the internet. The cookbook would be called PIE, and it would sell a zillion copies.

And that's how my life would be transformed.

Alas, I am but a community college English professor, a professor of English. And, within this calling, there is nothing I make that is so delectable as pie (arguments? assignments?). Having recognized this, there is nothing for it but to orchestrate the final projects, to lift the spirits of the dejected, to take pleasure in the good work and not take the not-so-good work personally. To grade, happily, even though the halls are still teeming and the meetings still glower, and there is so much, so much work yet to do.

And cookbook or no, I will make pie within the week. You mark my words.