Here’s photographic proof of two things. First, we have indeed had some lovely blue-skied days here in New England over the past week. Second, Keene State is a kinder, greener campus that uses energy-efficient fluorescent light bulbs in its various indoor and outdoor fixtures. I’d like to think this latter fact makes Al Gore a happier man.

This week marks the end of Spring Semester classes at Keene State College, and it’s also the last week of the present term for SNHU Online. This means I’m running ragged (and not feeling very energy-efficient) tending to end-of-term details for both schools. The challenge of multi-tasking is one fact of an adjunct instructor’s life: if you want to stay financially solvent during the under-employed summer months, you have to work double- or sometimes triple-time during the academic year. As a result, full-time adjuncts teaching a more-than-fulltime courseload at several institutions–i.e. full-time adjuncts like me–typically reach Spring Semester feeling completely spent: there aren’t enough hours to do what we must, let alone what we’d wish.

This means I’ve been spending a lot of time this past week looking at my favorite failing tree, making the usual end-of-term resolutions to work both harder and smarter next year than it feels I’ve done this time around. It will be another week, at least, before I’m done with Spring Semester grading; it will be another week, at least, before I have the time, energy, and mental bandwidth to relax with a book and a lawn-chair under a sunny tree. In the meantime, I secretly wish someone would change my less-than-efficient mental bulbs, leaving me with a Bright Idea to light my way from Now to Then.