Hey Girl, Big Finish

As Finals Week is wrapping up, we are seeing more and more students hauling out suitcases and duffle bags and leaving campus.  They look tired, and are dressed more in sweats and workout clothes than their normal (read cutest) clothes.  Campus always begins to feel a little strange, because as the bulk of students leave, the stragglers who remain for the last exams look and seem a bit like the Last Men (or Women) Standing.

Treat them gently when they get home.  They are going to be tired and weary and it might take a couple of days of extra sleep and laziness before they perk up to their ordinary selves.  There are other students – particularly first years – who have been homesick and are going to be SO excited to see their families again and be in their own beds.

Faculty members are due to turn in grades to the Registrar’s office on December 19th, so then (or shortly after), your students will be able to log into WIN and see how they have done.  If you are the parent of a first-year student, you should know that very often the first semester’s grades are lower than what the student will do in subsequent semesters.  Brace your reaction to their grades accordingly.  For first-year students, this semester has been all about trying to figure out what is expected and learning the ropes.  Your first-years have had tremendous adjustments in terms of the level and pace of work, and how to balance that with total independence.  It is a lot to manage at 18.

My own personal experience, and the pattern I have seen with years and years of having my own academic advisees, is that the first semester grades were the worst ones, and the GPA typically gets better as time goes by, as long as students put academics first and do what they know it takes to succeed.  So if you see Bs or Cs (or lower) where you always saw straight As in high school, don’t panic.  Believe me, your students are nervous to share their grades for fear of disappointing you.   The question I always wanted my parents to say on the subject of a [less than perfect] grade was “Did you do everything you could do to succeed, and did you try your hardest?  If the answer is yes, then that’s all I can expect.”

And just as Finals Week is ending, we need to have a big finish for our Internet Meme week.  One of the best and most prolific memes in recent years has been with movie star Ryan Gosling, whose combination of good looks and romantic movie roles make most of your daughters (and some of their mothers too, I suspect) weak at the knees.  He won a lot of hearts with his role in The Notebook, and some enterprising person decided to start a meme with him that always begins with a picture of him saying “Hey girl,” and then adding some very sensitive and woman-pleasing kind of line. Such as this one (who would say no to more foot massages?)

There are many iterations of the Hey Girl meme, including Feminist Ryan Gosling (where all his sayings are about feminist philosophy), a librarian version.  Google it and you’ll see tons of variations on this theme.

An extremely witty person(s) on campus created a Tumblr blog called ZSRyanGosling, and the entries are about WFU. ZSRyanGosling is on Twitter as well.  ZSRRyanGosling evidently follows the Daily Deac’s Meme Week coverage and called us out on Twitter the other day with the following:

@WFUParents hey girl, you keep leaving out everyone’s favorite meme.

Not to worry, we replied: @ZSRyanGosling Perhaps we’re saving the best for last!

@WFUParents hey girl, you’re wiser than I gave you credit for …

So today’s meme goes out to @ZSRyanGosling.  By way of background, Wake Forest has a series of tunnels that run under the campus buildings.  Some had been open in the past (such at the tunnel that connects Bostwick and Johnson residence halls) and others had been closed for ages, but it was a campus rite of passage to go “tunneling” and see what was down there.  The tunnels are closed now for safety reasons and students are prohibited from going down there.

Hey girl, it’s Ryan’s turn to tunnel.