Platinum Friday
"Fridays are golden.", she said.
These words have stuck with me ever since they were spoken by one of my co-workers. Their meaning? When you work in academia, the frantic pace, as least as it relates to information technology, is Monday through Thursday, the days when the majority of our customers are in-house and banging on the door for attention. On Fridays, the students/faculty are still around, they are just in smaller numbers and require minimum attention.
Fridays end up being days that you can focus on a single task and get it accomplished without much fear of interruption. It provides you an opportunity to lock grips with that one particular problem. The one that's only been getting part of your attention all week, not to mention bugging the holy crap out of you, and as such is still unresolved. In the truest sense, it's a time to settle your scores with your work.
Then there are Fridays during the summer semester. If Fridays during the fall and spring are considered golden, then summer semester Friday's must be platinum. The hallways are almost empty, the daylight cascading in amongst the quiet. Call volume drops down to the single digits and a few sparse e-mail trickle into the inbox. Students and faculty are almost non-existant, and of those faculty that are on campus, they're busy squirreled away in their own pursuits, preserving the sanctity of the day.
"Platinum" Fridays are the kind of days you'd expect if Willy Wonka, or perhaps Bob Marley, designed the American work week. Everyone's in good spirits, going about their tasks in an easy, carefree manner. The mood is light and the work less strenuous. In many ways, I think it ends up being more productive than Monday through Thursday.
After today, there are only five more left, after which they change back to gold. But gold's not so bad. Is it?