Monday, January 16, 2012

Total & Complete Schedule Disconnect*

We knew that our Spring Break would probably never coincide with the boys', but we never expected that the disconnect* between their school's schedule and ours at the university would be so great!

Our university has a slightly different schedule from others -- we begin before Labor day, and the school year ends on or around Memorial day. The school also operates on most major holidays (including Labor day) -- except for today, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Day (good thing: as a result, we have a week off on Thanksgiving).

The boys, on the other hand, have all holidays off from school, except -- obviously (and as "Murphy's Law" would dictate it) -- MLK's Day!!

Isn't that just awfully aggravating? So today we are enjoying a peaceful day of work at home while the boys are at school while next month on Presidents' Day we're going to have to bring them to the university with us. In addition to the holidays, their school has  several days when their teachers have an "in-service" day or other training activities. I guess the worse will be their Spring break: what are we going to do with them for four days? (at least both K & I have Fridays off this semester).

These are problematic, but minor disconnects, though, when compared to the big "vacation disconnect." K's summer grants go from June to the end of July (but not in May, when the boys are still in school), so the best month for him to take the month-long vacation he's entitled to would be August. Guess what? The boys' school starts in the middle of August. Thankfully their school year ends at the end of May, so they have all of June off, so in the future when K doesn't have to rely in the university grants anymore and has outside grants, we can schedule our vacation trips for June.

(annoying first world problems, I know, but still real)

* I'm not 100% comfortable in using disconnect as a noun, but I truly enjoy the plasticity [flexibility] of the English language in which "better" can be a verb too, not just a comparative adjective. This post by Ubuntucat (which I found by googling "disconnect as a noun" is pretty good. I might have to start reading her (?) blog).

No comments: