Hey, it's not like we stop working when classes end--Here's a list of things I've done since the last class ended on January 12.
In addition to all that, on January 27 I attended the farewell talks and following reception/party for two great colleagues, Mamoto Seiya and John Hatcher. Both are retiring after decades of being larger than live mainstays of Fukuoka University and our English department. Both will be greatly missed. In the case of John, I feel as if I'm losing my big brother, colleague, and friend... Luckily, he lives near the campus, and we'll be able to continue meeting for good lunches, but it won't be the same thing as having him right down the hallway and right beside me in meetings! Their last talks were great. John talked about his life-long love of traveling and reading, explaining how traveling is a kind of external study and reading a kind of internal travel. Mamoto Sensei talked about the mission of a university and read a moving elementary school students prose poem about her deceased grandmother's pickled plums. All this has been to say that January is a busy month. And February is not a time of complete idleness: I'll have to invigilate entrance exams for university students and graduate school students, attend some more meetings and the departmental farewell party for my two colleagues, and generally start preparing for the new year's classes, which begin in April, which will come way too fast.
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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