In the space of two days, my two closest friends in Jackson have up and left to do cool summer things for the next few weeks—one is doing research in Central Asia, while the other is headed up north to work on some projects and hang out with friends and family.

If it weren’t for my students in summer classes, I’d be almost completely abandoned at this point (although I’ve seen a few soon-to-be-ex-colleagues around and I’ll probably have lunch with some of them later on in the month). Of course, if it weren’t for my students, I’d be off doing something else myself—more likely than not, spending late June and most of July in Ann Arbor with stats geeks.

Without students, I probably also wouldn’t have been up at 8:30 this morning either, come to think of it.