The holiday season is really in full swing now, and at school it mostly means two things: food and visits from former students.

The past two days have been eating binges at school for sure. Yesterday was the math department party, and today there was both a free breakfast and a free lunch for the faculty. Tomorrow guidance has their all-day party, and Saturday, of course, will be the big Christmas Eve eating extravaganza with my family.

My visitors today included:

• Gianna, a freshman at Penn State who told me some good things about her college but some real horror stories about her roommate,
• Kevin, a senior at Berkeley who is only writing 13 applications to grad school, a mere drop in the bucket compared to his 19 for college ☺;
• Meghan–that’s a boy, btw ☺–who is a senior at Cornell looking forward to a new job in...Oregon!?!
• Winston, a pharmacy student at Rutgers who is looking forward to another year of classes before he begins his killer rotations

Tomorrow should be exciting though since Lt. Lauren is coming to visit. I haven’t seen her in too long, and she is always somebody I really enjoy spending time with.

Considering how much I love my students, the holiday season is worthwhile if only for these visits from former students who fled the nest years ago. It’s nice that so many of them keep in touch, another reason to be thankful for the invention for the internet.