A Student's Rush to Christmas

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Some of you may recall I teach a class at my local community college. I enjoy it tremendously, except for… grading. However, final grades are due tonight by 10pm, so I’ll be grinding away to get through twenty-some final papers by then.

Unlike when I was in school myself, I won’t be powering through with Coca-Cola and a family sized bag of M&Ms, but I suspect a lot of students will be using whatever the modern equivalents are. I had a Zoom meeting with one student who had some questions, and the poor guy looked exhausted. Meanwhile, over in The Hague, Virginia’s communications to me have narrowed down to invitations to edit this or that paper in Google Docs. The miracles of modern technology!

This all makes me think of what this point in December felt like for so many years when I was in college, grad school and law school. The period between Thanksgiving wasn’t full of holiday spirit and preparations, but by frantically trying to catch up with missing assignments, begging professors for an extension, and all-nighters spent producing papers (that always turned out surprisingly good, somehow. This may be the origin of my writing-procrastination habit.)

The occasional glimpses of the season came from twinkle lights hanging around dorm windows and the Christmas music on blast at the pub when we went out drinking. No, the urgency of getting the last papers done didn’t preclude drinking.

It was a hard, exhausting grind, but the reward was the giddiness and relief of successfully wrapping up the term, knowing you had the whole winter break off to sleep late, eat your mom’s home cooking, and hang out with friends. I don’t know if anything else in life has matched the feeling of taking the bus back home, seeing the lights and decorations on the way, knowing my dad would be there at the station to meet me when I pulled in.

How about you, Reds? What do you remember about this time of year in your student days?

 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What a fun question! I remember from high school that all we cared about was vacation, and that our homework and attention fell to absolute zero.  And our teachers knew it. So then this happened. My junior year, in mid-December, our Honors English class teacher Miss Godfrey assigned us to write a paper on Martin Chuzzlewit and hand it in BEFORE vacation.

 

Are you kidding me? It was about 800 pages!

 

But they didn't call us honors English for nothing. We divided up the book and each read a different part of it, and then got together and put our parts together and discussed it, and then wrote our papers based on the part we had read.

 

 I remember mine was on the scary nurse Sairey Gamp. 

 

I think the entire class clandestinely participated in this–what we thought was such a clever scheme to avoid reading the whole thing, but what, as it turned out, made us all focus on this book  more carefully and deeply than we ever would have if we weren’t being so “clever.”

 

Thank you, Miss Godfrey. You were the clever one. What a gift!

 

JENN McKINLAY: My memories are very similar to yours, Julia, but I had a liter of Coke, a pack of smokes, and a bag of Doritos. Wrote some of my best papers at two in the morning after a night of pub singing with the college boyfriend’s rugby team. Once finals were cleared, my roomies and I then hit the Chapel Square Mall in New Haven to do our down and dirty student budget shopping before we booked it home for the holidays. My memories are more twinkle lights on the city green, the warmth of the stores hitting you in the face when you entered, and then the excited drive home to see the fam, eat home cooking, and catch up to the high school buds also returning home for the holidays. In Arizona, it’s more end of the semester pool parties and barbecues. Weird.

HALLIE EPHRON: What I remember most is that for the first time in my academic life, my college classes assigned more reading than it seemed humanly possible to read, never mind to properly absorb in the time given. And giving up. I’d have asked CHAT GPT for a summary if it had been invented yet {and crossed my fingers hoping the summary was accurate).

 

 

This was complicated by the fact that my occasional trips to the library to “study” were forays to “run into” Jerry who studied in Columbia’s physics library, a spot I’d never even have known existed if it hadn’t been for him. If he was there, and he often was, we played footsie much more than studied.

RHYS BOWEN: At college I seem to remember that we had exams in January which meant studying hung over our heads for the Christmas vacation. Also I worked for the post office during Christmas break. I was a mail person with a huge mail sack slung across me, walking up and down freezing wet streets with the wind howling (at least that is how I remember it). And halfway through the route a mail truck would meet me and exchange my almost empty sack for a full one. It was heavy and tiring work but it did give me some Christmas spending money in case I wanted to pop over to Germany to see my boyfriend… which I did.

My school memory is of our lovely Christmas concert which the elite choir started by processing through the open cloisters wearing robes, carrying candles and singing Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Candles. I got chills entering that completely dark auditorium , the lights coming on as we sang Wolkum Yole. We also had a Christmas party for each grade. 

LUCY BURDETTE: I do remember looking forward to reconnecting with high school pals–in bars in our hometown when we were old enough. It was a funny time, because Christmas was beautiful and well-celebrated at home in New Jersey, but then I’d be chomping at the bit to get back to school and away from family! I think I remember the break after Christmas as waaaaayyyy too long.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I feel very boring here in comparison. I lived at home my first couple of years of college, and after that when I was in my garage apartment, I was only an hour’s drive from home. It was always lovely though, to walk into the old house, and to get my mom to do my laundry, as at college that meant going to a laundromat. 

 

JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What are your memories of racing to get papers and projects done before the Christmas break? 

Roommates plus Red Hot Deals for the week!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: After an exciting summer of work, travel and surgery, Youngest is back at the University of Maine, in a new dorm and with a new roommate. Her freshman roommate was wonderful, but decided to live off-campus this year, so another of Youngest's friends stepped into the breach. Coincidentally, the Smithie acquired a new roommate recently as well. She and The Very Tall Boyfriend share a three bedroom apartment, and having someone in the third room helps keep the costs low. They've also been fortunate in their apartment mates; the previous one was a wonderful young medical professional who left because her work required her to be closer to the hospital. 

The Smithie, however, hasn't always had good roommate luck. Her assigned freshman roomie had apparently developed some, shall we say, strange schedules at the boarding school that preceded college for her. She would start working around midnight, studying and writing with desk lamp and computer lighting up the room. That would have been bad enough, but she would actually print out papers at 3am - on the machine situated between their twin beds. Unsurprisingly, she'd also sleep most of the afternoon, leaving the Smithie to tiptoe in and out of her room, afraid to turn on the lights or open the curtains (because SHE had been brought up to consider other people's feelings. Can you tell I'm still ticked off at the roommate?)

Eventually, the RA and then the house committee were called in, and after the first semester, the Smithie got her own room, from a junior who had gone abroad. She was so put off by the experience, she didn't share her space with another person until the Very Tall Boyfriend came around. 

I've never had that bad of a roommate, thank heavens. I've had a few whose names and faces I can't recall, I married one :-) , one is still my very best friend, and I had several that were perfectly nice and unexceptional. As a young working woman in DC, I had one memorable housemate, a brilliant, funny, generous Georgetown Law student who had been raised (I'm swear this is true; not exaggerating here) by freethinkers from New York who thought teaching their daughter any form of manners, personal hygiene, and environmental cleanliness was oppressing her and promoting the bourgeois values of the capitalist class. (I should mention these good socialists owned the same sort of upper West Side apartment you see on Mrs. Maisel, and could afford to pay their kids way through college and law school.)This wasn't a huge problem for her housemates - she would clean up after herself in the kitchen, and we all had our own bedrooms and baths, but the chickens came home to roost when she started getting job interviews with white-shoe law firms (she was an excellent student!) For those of you who aren't familiar with the process, interviews with prestigious law forms involve the prospective associate being taken out to lunch at a good restaurant, usually by several partners and possibly a senior associate or two. My poor roomie didn't know how to use a napkin, she had no concept of which utensil to use when, and she ate with her mouth open. With her mouth open and the FOOD WOULD FALL OUT ONTO HER CLOTHING. And she wouldn't wash her clothing for a very long time. One of the other girls and I put her through Miss Manners Boot Camp.  We drilled her on silverware, napkins, sitting, chewing, excusing herself, etc., etc. We made her pretend we were partners at the firm and had her eat soup in front of us while also conversing (that was a challenge.) Alas, I left to marry Ross before I found out if she got a plum position. She was a lovely person, even if she didn't brush her hair or apply deodorant, and I wish her well.

How about you, Reds? Who were your memorable roommates?


HALLIE EPHRON: My first college roommate was a disaster. We got off on the wrong foot when I arrived after her, and her mother was arranging her underwear in the bureau and I thought *she* was the roommate. We were... incompatible. And ended up asking for separate rooms, but weren't deemed dysfunctional enough for it to be granted. Food did not fall out of her clothing...LOL. But she was just a very dour person.


JENN McKINLAY: I never had a terrible roommate, but I have to admit I have pretty low standards. Given that I'm the girl who lived out of her laundry basket for four years, because putting clothes in drawers just seemed so futile, I have no room to judge. My first roommate was a cheerleader, very nice girl, but she was looking for her Mrs. degree, so we had nothing in common and separated after our first semester. After that, I roomed with friends and then boyfriends so I was always pretty happy. Of course, it could be that I was the bad roommate, as in more of a partier than a studier, and lived life like every day was an open house, bringing home every stray student I came across and offering up our couch as a crash pad. Sorry, roomies!

JULIA: Jenn, my freshman roommate (who is still my BFF) and I would pile our dirty clothes in front of the almost-floor-length sliding windows and let the winds howl through our room. After that treatment, any garments without noticeable stains or smells were deemed "clean" and went back in the drawers. So I can't think you living out of a laundry basket was too bad!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I never had a terrible roomie, thank goodness. In fact, except for a brief stint in boarding school (before I was expelled!) I only had one roommate, the first semester I went away to college. Our room was a terribly awkward pie-shaped space in the university's round dorm. What were they thinking??? But she was nice and I don't remember any problems. Not that I was there much, I was too busy partying and skipping classes. You can guess that adventure didn't end well. After that, for me it was living at home and community college, then commuting to my eventual alma mater for a year. My last two years I lived alone in a little garage apartment off campus, studied all the time, and absolutely loved it.  The solitary-writer gene was already in full force!

RHYS BOWEN: My college roommate and I are still good friends and meet every couple of years in England. I was always the social one, bringing in groups of friends for coffee and she was ultra shy. She led a quiet and lonely life until about five years ago when she announced she was moving in with the man she had always loved who was now leaving his wife for her. And she appeared at dinner in a slinky red dress! Talk about a surprise! After college I share a flat with three friends--still my closest friends today. A wonderful experience. The only bad roommates were when I was in Australia and dating John. These girls would help themselves to my food in the refrigerator and go through my things. I think this spurred me into rapid marriage!  
 




LUCY BURDETTE: I attended Princeton, the third year they accepted women-- so it was actually a hard experience. The school still had a lot of old-fashioned customs (like importing girls for parties from all-girl schools) and they had not a clue about how to help kids from very different backgrounds adjust. Given that, I was lucky in my roomie draw. We were both pre-med (she went on to a very distinguished career in medicine) and a little lost. Though she was tall and blonde and a boy magnet. And I was...not. Sometimes I would get her cast-offs from dates that didn't click. It was good to have such a close friend when feeling like a stranger in a strange land.


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: My first roomie was a perfect match for me--on paper. She was from a loving midwest family, and was an English major. However . She did not like music. At all. I was on a big Judy Collins/Leonard Cohen kick (and spent one entire week in tribute living on tea and oranges),  and she was not impressed. She went to sleep at about 9pm and I--didn't. I stayed up late, and cut out black light stars to glue onto our ceiling. I could feel the resentment and judgment growing.  But the big rift came when we were in the same English class, and had to do a "compare and contrast" (remember?) paper on  The Faerie Queen and CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.  After they were graded, the producer gave her a D and me an A. Which would have been contentious enough, but the professor also wrote on her paper--"you might want to check with your roommate on how to do this properly."  Well, that was the end of that. Bye bye roomie. (You can see how that episode was burned in my brain.)

For  the rest of college, I did all I could to have. single room.

JULIA: Well, we've learned two things today: the Reds were either very lucky with roommates in college and/or were party girls. (Come to Bouchercon in Dallas and you'll see if we're still party girls!) How about you, dear readers? What were your roommate experiences like - did you get the good, the bad, or the ugly?

Red Hot News on events and sales:

Julia: The second Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery, A FOUNTAIN FILLED WITH BLOOD, is on sale all this month for $2.99:

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Prefer a trade paper copy? Enter the Goodreads Giveaway for one of 25 copies!

JENN: My publisher is having another Goodreads Giveaway, this time for The Christmas Keeper, coming Oct 2019! Enter here!

DEBS:  Here is a link to a two chapter excerpt from A BITTER FEAST, free!

GARDEN OF LAMENTIONS is on sale in all e-book formats--$1.99 until 9/16

And signed copies of A BITTER FEAST are available from Barnes and Noble and The Poisoned Pen, so pre-order now!