Back to School: What is a week?

The university changed our starting dates last year, so our first day of classes was on a Wednesday (instead of a Monday). My graduate seminar, held on Tuesday, has consequently met once; while the sophomore seminar has met twice.

In other words, I am facing week 2 in my graduate course and week 3 in my undergraduate course.

Weeks were already hard enough to keep straight as it is. I tend to prepare syllabi with one column that is labeled "week" and another with specific dates, but group readings by the week (not the day). In spring, I never know whether spring break should be a week or be like the 13th floor in buildings where superstition reigns. In fall, Thanksgiving "week" (when I can count on almost no class being full) seems like it should be labele demi-week.

Then there is the "this week" problem. When does "this week" start? For me, it is usually (maybe always) the week coming; for Rus, it is often (maybe always) the week that includes the current day. So sometimes his "this week" is my "last week" and sometimes it is my "next week" (which is usually-- perhaps always!-- "this week").

Weekends are when our weeks diverge the most. I appear to really be cutting the weekend out as a separate time/space, whereas Rus-- like a calendar-- includes the weekend in the week.

So on Saturday, I will talk about "this week" meaning the coming Monday through Friday, but he will think I mean the previous Monday through Friday since Saturday is still part of the week.

And it may be, although we cannot clarify this, that Sunday begins his week while it ends my weekend.

So. I have to live this entire semester in two weeks at once. My course plans are all framed in terms of weeks. But I am only about to do week 2 for the graduate seminar, while the undergrads on Thursday are already to week 3.

And that matters to me because I believe that week 3 is a conversion point, when we reach a situation of common purpose. Which I will now have to reach after Tuesday and on or before Thursday.

I suppose I could simply decide that my weeks now end on Wednesday. But that seems a bit extreme.

Oh, and then there is the end of the semester. When the powers that be decided to make the semester start on Wednesday, they compensated by ending the semester on a Wednesday. (Somehow that worked.)

But with no warning, the university decided to implement a three day "reading period" at the end of this semester. We are not allowed to lecture or indeed ask students to come to class at all now the last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

(A colleague more on top of things than me had to have her daughter help black out those days on already-printed syllabi.)

But this means my final Tuesday seminar is actually gone. My graduate students will have one week less on both ends of the semester.

So what is a week? how much of this temporal distortion can I stand? I will see what happens as the week goes on: already, I panicked because my online folder for readings for week 3 is empty (this is week 2...)