LABOR day

Labor day was instituted in the United States in 1887 by Grover Cleveland Ohio as a reaction to various labor movements of the time. It was something that was already happening in other countries (that's what May Day is all about, by the way), and our country followed suit. As is typical of America, we chose not to celebrate it on May 1, like everyone else, but chose our own random day. I guess it's like the standard vs. metric thing. We'll do it our way. Anyway, the purpose of labor day is to not work.

BUT. Some people work on labor day. As just one example, we at UVA Law have classes today. No one's sure why, but it probably has something to do with the total number of Monday classes in a semester. If you shave one off, even for a national holiday instituted to give people a day off, it has to be made up somewhere. Heaven forbid we should just cut that one day from the semester. We wouldn't be getting our money's worth. A friend of mine recently did the calculations and figured out that each student at Virginia Law is paying approximately $70 per class on average. Seventy bones. That averages to like a dollar a minute. That's the same price of a mid-level recording studio. I could've been recording music for three years instead of going to school. And when I finished the three years of recording, at least I'd have several albums to show for it. What do I have now? A boatload of debt. Although at least I have much greater earning potential. The one way we get back at these professors for keeping us in on labor day, and for making us pay a dollar a minute, is by going out into the world and earning way more per hour than they do. Mwuahahahaha.

Don't let me lead you astray - although our ultra dedicated faculty here at the law school are working hard on labor day, there are some who aren't. Like those who run the university's data systems. It's not like it's important or anything. Even though we have classes today, no one can add or drop any of them since LawReg is down. YET AGAIN! This thing is always down. It's the law school's biggest joke (besides the new "let's not focus so much on drinking" philosophy). Here's the email we got from them today:

The University is closed today for Labor Day. Unfortunately, the data import from the University's system crashed and we are unable to contact anyone. Consequently, we are re-booting LawReg as it was at 6:00 p.m. on Friday. As a result, LawReg will not open until 10:30 a.m. today, Monday, September 4th. Any changes to courses that were scheduled to appear this morning will not appear until Tuesday morning at 10 a.m.

Hilarious. The university has the day off, but not the dumb law students. They want their $70 worth. And when the university's registration system fails, at the key time known as the beginning of the semester, "we are unable to contact anyone." I realize they're on vacation, but is there NO ONE who can help us? What if the school were burning down? We called 9-1-1, but we no one is answering. It's labor day. Heaven help us.

I'm going to go dance around a may pole and celebrate.