In medias res #18- I'm not there more than I am

Phew! This one is two weeks late, dear reader. But its crunch time, and something had to give. I apologize for leaving you out in the cold like a puppy with an inconsiderate owner. If only you would stop shitting on the carpet.
One of my favorite classes in graduate school was about campus environments. I was (and remain) particularly fascinated by the interplay between socially constructed and physical environments. On my campus the physical environment is constantly in flux. We’re rehabbing buildings, tearing old ones down, and throwing new ones up. As space shifts what our students do in that space also changes. At the moment we’re lacking in premier large scale event space, and so my students are envisioning programming that is smaller and more intimate.
I am particularly struck by this affect-at the moment- because my personal space is influx as well. I got back from the holidays, and went straight off to a weekend retreat with my students. Since then every evening I’ve had a program, and my desire/willingness to put away my clean laundry and put together a new piece of furniture have been minimal. As such my apartment looks like a disaster zone.
Normally this would piss me off for about the first five minutes, and then I would come in turn on American Idol and ignore it. I am generally a pretty fastidiously neat person, and although my apartment’s disorganized it is not really messy or dirty. I’m taking exception at the moment because yesterday a friend asked if he could stay with me this weekend. Of course, I’m happy to have a visitor, but not when my apartment looks like a war zone. So I’m heading out early to clean.
I mention all this so you get a sense of how much order matters to me. Of course, I could of simply said: dear reader, order matters to me. But it wouldn’t of had the same impact, would it? No, no it wouldn’t.
So order matters to me. Some of my students are rehabbing an older lounge on campus for use by their student group. Of all the things I’ve been called on to do this year, this one task has been the most frustrating. In large part it is because of the disorganization. They’ve moved furniture into the hallway while they paint. They store their paint supplies all over the place, and they have ruined many a brush by forgetting (refusing?) to wash it.
My school is definitely a town and gown institution. When I tell people where I work that bit of animosity about the wealth and privilege of our students bubbles up. People love to recount horror stories about our students making some grave error or generally acting like brats. While this is so very far from the case with most of our students, like any campus we have a collection of bad seeds.
That said, I hadn’t really noticed how sheltered our students are until they ruined all the paint brushes. This might be an odd moment for critical reflection or revelation, but in reality it brought a couple of different things into focus for me. In large part I think I attributed much of this behavior initially to age. One of the strange byproducts of working at a competitive private is the reality that almost all our students are in the 18-23 range. So it becomes easier to dismiss anti-social behavior as a result of age.
This too shall pass. They will finish painting, the new furniture will arrive, and all will be well in the world. I will have a new satellite office to work out of with lots more student contact, and hopefully I can teach them to respect the space a little bit more. If not, I will aggressively intervene the best way I know how: throw out anything and everything not nailed down.