April is the cruellest month

Nick Nolte as Colonel Tall in The Thin red Line

For the last couple years I’ve jokingly shared the picture above, a powerful closeup of a wrung-out Col Tall from The Thin Red Line, once classes have ended and final grades are submitted. “Celebrating the end of another great spring semester!” is my usual caption.

Not that spring semesters are bad—they’re just exhausting. I’ve puzzled over this and have some ideas, but can’t say with certainty why the spring wears me out so much more than the summer or fall. Regardless of why or whether I ever figure out why, and regardless of the quality of the students or precisely how busy my schedule is, by April every year I am running out of steam. I find myself trying to hearten the students, urging them to finish strong and not just stagger across the finish line. When I say this—as I freely admit to them—I’m speaking to myself.

This year is perhaps the peak of the trend: After a busy and productive winter, I now read books a few pages at a time, I can’t muster enough concentration to write, I’ve neglected my personal correspondence. Here, I’ve begun six blog posts in the last four or five weeks, all of which are half-complete in the drafts folder.

But I remind myself that the exhaustion is not only the result of work but also a symptom of good things. I have a good job with excellent coworkers and I get to talk about history all day, and I begin and end the day at home with Sarah and the kids. And as Sarah and I remind each other, people with infant twins have a legitimate reasons to be worn out.

When Dante meets the spirit of his old friend Forese Donati in Purgatory, Forese, in describing the sancitifying suffering he is undergoing on the terrace of the gluttonous, speaks first of punishment but then corrects himself: “I say pain when I should say solace.” Looking at the exhaustion and the weariness of a busy spring, I might say the same.

After all, in The Thin Red Line that shot of Col Tall comes in the aftermath of a victory.