Tomorrow we begin the last week of the 2023-24 academic year at WVU Law.

I’m looking forward to the grand finale of my two major efforts this year: a review and reflection on the Immigration Law Clinic students’ work since August, and students’ final pitch presentations in Entrepreneurship for Lawyers (aka, our “Shark Tank”).

Both are gonna be EPIC.

passing the baton

As usual for this point in the semester, I’m also exhausted.

When I first started teaching, I realized something I didn’t think about when I sat on the other side of the classroom.

As a student, you have to know the answers during the last week, for final exams.

As a professor, you have to know the answers every day for fourteen weeks straight. Remember the fatigue and pressure of final exams? Basically, professors are in “finals” all semester long.

It’s a heckuva task. It has certainly gotten easier, after fifteen years of teaching, but each year brings new challenges. That keeps the work exciting and interesting — but never easy! I’m feel like I’m running Mile 25 of a marathon (an analogy I can now offer with confidence, having run the Pittsburgh Marathon last May).

Happily Ever After

But I’m in luck this semester. Since neither the clinic nor the entrepreneurship class lend themselves to written tests, I won’t spend the month of May grading exams! :-) :-) :-)

What will I do instead?

I dunno. Maybe I’ll go to Disney World — I’m hoping I’ll run into Coach Staley there …