In the midst of tackling a seemingly unsurmountable mountain of end-of-year work, I keep flashing on the orange cinderblock walls of my junior high school principal’s office. For a kid who did okay in school, I spent an awful lot of time in the principal’s office–no surprise, probably. Combine hormones with a deeply ingrained mistrust of authority, and I was born to be an 8th grade teacher’s nightmare. Also no surprise that I keep flashing on that pocket of purgatory right about now. My malaise: the holidaze.