Transitions

My friend was looking at some calendars (diaries in British) in a shop and I jokingly said that maybe someday I'd buy a calendar that starts in January and not August. Funny that August and September have always been the year's transition time for me, for my entire life. What could be more transitional than the start of school?
Cambridge, in its infinite weirdness, starts in October. September here is a strange time when staff and grad students are back from their August holidays but the department's halls are still empty because there are still reduced summer opening hours, no undergrads, no seminars. Instead the department and the whole city is full of workers painting and hammering and fixing, doing the annual battle against these ancient buildings' desire to fall apart.
So it is that in a construction-noisy and paint-smelling and empty department, Geoff and I are cleaning out his desk. My goofy Canadian friend is now a PhD, "viva-ed" (meaning he had his oral defense and passed) and now moving away. Last night we all went to a "super hall" - an unusually fancy dinner - at Geoff's college as a goodbye party... but Geoff had a job interview during the day, which he and all of us were very nervous about. Geoff has applied to countless postdocs over the past 9 months and gotten only one interview. Ahh! So this one interview, scheduled days before Geoff jets back to Canada to live in his parents' basement and hope for a job at IKEA, had a lot riding on it. Geoff strolled into the formal hall, straight off the train from his interview, in his interview suit and his academic gown, freshly shaven to make him look "professional", smiled at the crowd of HPS-ers clapping for him, and said, "I didn't get it."
It could have been a dinner of celebration and joy, or at least relief that his interview was over and he'd find out the result later. We did a good job of forced cheerfulness and dissing the employer, but I think we were all a bit depressed and didn't know what to say. Now Geoff is clearing his desk for good. His phone contract is over, so his phone has stopped working. He took his books back to the library. He's having lunch with his supervisor now, saying goodbye.
Funny how transitions are not negative or positive, they just mean things will be different.