Preoccupations With Occupations

Super hectic time of year. Work's in full swing again though it isn't something that happens often or for very long. Very soon, little odds and ends will crop up disrupting the smooth rhythm of classes, lectures and thought processes.

Among them, the inevitable students' elections which are seemingly casual on the surface with the kids putting up relaxed friendly faces but oftentimes there's actually a lot of frenetic activity behind the scenes. What's it with the male psyche and the lust for power? We once had a student candidate crying disconsolately on the steps after a loss. He was all snappily decked out in his Sunday best, suited, booted and neck-tied, and we were told he'd blown a small fortune on little professionally printed vote tags and a huge banner bearing his name. Enough to drive anyone to tears.

And then the sports. We had an unimaginably hooliganish intercollege free-for-all last year where rival college students taunted and threw stones at each other on the streets. Something similar had broken out the last couple of years but the powers-that-be had obviously dismissed them as one-off incidents and failed to provide adequate security. Needless to say, all hell broke loose last year which ironically brought it to the notice of the local media which tends to do nothing much else besides the in thing of lambasting politicians and eulogising our little small-town "celebrities." I suppose negative news is better than being constantly roundly ignored.

On the personal side, I've scored a little triumph this year. After all these years of teaching lit, I finally have the privilege of teaching Hamlet. I've taught Shakespeare before, put in several years of teaching Julius Caesar, in fact but Hamlet is in a class of its own. The brooding introspection and existential preoccupation. The Oedipal undertones. This is a challenge I'm enjoying every aside and soliloquy of.

Here's to the classics.