Semester it's over!...it's finally over!

When the semester ends there is a fulfillment that arrives. Academics can dedicate ourselves to writing, to finishing those unfinished projects that we stretch out during the semester. We can finish those articles or books that feed us as teachers. We can think!.

Many years ago when I worked in a small university that no longer exists, I was sitting in my office reading a book for my next class. I had a comfortable seat for just that. An authority from the university arrived, although to tell the truth he did not really have auctoritas, only potestas. Anyway, this gentleman, who was walking around the campus for some visitors, entered my office, saw me sitting down and said, in a joking tone towards the visitors: "Look at this one: he's reading! As if I paid him for that! "

And this is precisely the problem of the university today. A kind of headlessness (a-kephaleía, more or less, in Greek), a lack of mind-mentality that directs everything that the university implies towards its own ends. There are certain secondary purposes, ordered to the main one. But the primary purpose should not be forgotten. Even the class itself. The class is like a phenomenon of nature, cyclical, alive, organic. He has spirit. It is spiritual. The class does not start when the teacher enters the classroom. It starts much earlier. With that reading in a comfortable chair. Or even before. In the reflective pause that the teacher carries out in his daily life, even before sitting down to read. The class does not end when students leave the classroom between classes. The semester doesn't really start with the first class in march (for the southern hemisphere) or august (in the northern hemisphere). Nor does it end with the final exam.

The reflection of the professor is already part of the class that he will dictate in a few hours...days...weeks...months or even years. And in the class itself discussions are generated. Questions are asked. Innocent questions, the same way Socrates asked, or was asked. In the same way that a scientist establishes a hypothesis by looking at a phenomenon. These dialogues feed reflection and give us insights. To create this spaces, create the time for this, give some effort, mobilizing money, so that this happens, is what university principal purpose is. This es the main characteristic of the university. What distinguishes the university from any other human institution. Everything else is oriented, somehow, to it.

Empty nest syndrome refers to the grief that many parents feel when their children move out of home.?The empty room syndrome is when a professor already wants to go back to teaching. He begins to prepare his next class. Motivated. Motivated by some existential or scientific question that he intends to answer during the next lesson. It is the same when parents beg for their children leave home to live their own live, but once the home -or the classroom- is empty, the desire to see it full of life is reborn.