thing-like

i like these cold, overcast days in houston that follow thanksgiving because i know it means that, soon, the stacks of grading that have piled to the ceiling will, with steady toil, diminish in size, and i will eventually be hitting the "submit" button on my grade sheets (only to realize i have two or three days to get ready to head back to the northeast and i haven't done a thing to prepare). it's true that i have been a bit overwhelmed the past week by the sheer institutionality of my place of employment -- the weird, pepto-bismal pink walls on the tenth floor where i have my office, the beige metal desks, the smell of dry erase markers, and, always, the looming jailhouse just across the bayou.

this happens at the end of the semester, when the hundred and twenty students i've been working with from all four classes (from the student who, without irony, compared zora neale hurston to sarah palin to the one who told me, also without irony, that my class was tedious) have finally sapped me, when i just cannot take any more committee meetings, and when the antics of my coworkers seem less colorful or charming and more like a sign of the sheer insanity. do you experience this? institutional architecture and infrastructure just seem so much more . . . pronounced, vivid, articulated, material, stark, concrete, solid . . . thing-like.