posted 2007/02/13 at 17:01
Right now we're under a snow emergency here in northern Toledo. Since the start of the day we've had about four inches fall on top of the three inches or so that was already on the ground, and we're supposed to get up to a foot more by tomorrow morning. I can't say that Toledo hasn't gotten worse snowfalls than this, but this one will be kind of big by our standards. That being said, after all the images in the news these past couple of days of the house-high snowfalls in upstate New York, it kind of feels odd for Toledo to be shutting down given we're only going to get a fraction of what people in New York are battling right now.
The University of Toledo declared its first snow day in a couple of years today, and of course I'm a little bit steamed that they'd declare a snow day right after I've graduated from there. This actually takes me back to the first-ever snow day I experienced at UT, during my second semester there. I was taking an introductory sociology course, and it was one of those courses that only met once a week for two and a half hours straight. Now, I had lots of once-a-week courses as a graduate student, and I think that format works well in graduate courses because at that point in your academic career you're really prepared to study for that long and go into a great amount of detail for a single subject. For a 1000-level course, though, students -- especially students just coming out of high school -- just aren't ready to stay seated for that long, let alone sit there and listen to a two-and-a-half-hour lecture. It didn't help that the professor in this course was one of those professors who just lectured at the students instead of making a significant effort to get students involved during the long class period.
What I'm getting at is that this course was not fun, something I realized very early on in the term. However, on the syllabus we got at the start of the semester, it noted that one of the classes in late March would be canceled because the professor would be attending a conference in Florida that week, so I was looking forward to that. Wouldn't you know it, the day that class was going to be canceled, Toledo got a freak early-spring blizzard that caused the campus to shut down that afternoon anyway. Making matters worse, I had scheduled an oral exam in my Japanese class for that afternoon, and word of the campus closing came literally five minutes before I was scheduled to start the exam, meaning I got all worked up over the exam only to have to reschedule it for later.
Thus, my first snow day at UT wound up hurting me more than it helped. What ticked me off more than that, and more than having to drive home in a blizzard, was thinking that this sociology professor, who I didn't particularly care for in the first place, was sunning it up in Florida while we, his students, were having to deal with all this snow and cold weather. Looking back on it now, that was kind of a real petty thing to be thinking, but looking out my window as I type this now, I can still remember how pissed I got back when it happened. If I were in that professor's position, I would have at least canceled a later class to "make up" the snow day for them.
Given that I'm going to Cleveland for a DDR tournament this Saturday, I really hope that the roads get better by then. The Ohio Turnpike is a pretty desolate area, and I've already experienced one traffic accident on there -- actually the only other time I've been to Cleveland, when I saw Björk perform there on the Post tour back in 1995 -- which was enough for me.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon