At the end of the year

There is a particular atmosphere in the room at the end of the year.

The work is finished, or as finished as it will be. The deadlines have passed. The presentations are done. The all-nighters have been survived, some more gracefully than others. What remains is something quieter. A collective exhale. And underneath it, something that is harder to name.

Students look at their work differently at the end of a year than they do at any other point.