Karma, I hear you knocking...

So tomorrow I have an educational-by due to extreme religion. As mentioned in a previous post, my institution is headed by a priest and takes its religion seriously. Tomorrow, religion trumps education with a Mass taking place during one of the heavily-used class time options. There's no word on whether students will be refunded for that credit hour they're losing to Jesus.

Needless to say, I won't be attending. But more surprisingly, I won't be using this post to bitch about that. You may thank the higher power of your choice if you're so inclined. I don't care.

Instead, tomorrow is a big deal because it's the first day that my students - who I assume also won't be attending Mass - have to come talk to me about their proposed research questions. This moment of the term always feels a bit like the last segment of "The Dating Game" to me - everyone talked a good game so far (or more accurately, avoided speaking at all), and now we're going to have the big reveal to see whether all those clever moments were leading me to an evening of ugly reality. Trying to launch students on a year long research odyssey (and try selling that bill of goods to students - so much for clever marketing fooling the masses) is always a bit iffy.

Now, as the term goes, I've already had pretty good luck. Out of the students doing more advanced theses and projects, I've dodged some bullets and managed to poach the department's current wunderkind. And having managed that coup, I fear for what the kids in the research class are going to bring as even karma sometimes pays attention in class.