TGIT

Ostensibly the end of my work-week today, as I have no classes again until Monday. Those who are in the educational trenches--or who are following this blog--know that a common and profound misconception is the idea that classes are the sum total of what we do--or even the biggest consumer of our time. Hah! In order to bring home all the assignments I have to mark, plus the two observations that I have to write up, plus the draft promo folder that I need to review, I had to load up my big wheeled backpack. (When I first mentioned to my friend Szilvia that I wanted such a pack, I inadvertently said I wanted one with wings. Wouldn't that be great? The visual image alone is worth conjuring up.) I generally only use the big pack around campus, when I have to schlep assignments and textbooks (plus my water bottles), but the canvas bag I usually carry stuff home in simply couldn't hold it all. I rather wish I had a scale: I'd be curious to find out how much all that paper weighs. Maybe, just for amusement's sake, I'll take a ruler to it and find out how high the stack is... if it doesn't spontaneously combust first.

But since it is Thursday, and since I don't have to get up early tomorrow (monumental sigh of relief), I decided to spoil myself. Despite the less than optimal effects on my finances (not to mention my waistline), I took myself out to one of my favorite restaurants. It's a little place here in Port, and they've known me by name since my third visit (and after my first, remembered that I have to avoid wheat, though they are a still a little confused about why: not allergies, dear ones, celiac--not that it really matters). When I treat myself to Bistro Toulouse, I sit at the teeny bar, have a drink and a spectacular dinner, read my book, chat with them if something occurs to any of us--and feel blissfully spoiled, pampered to the hilt. Now that I'm home and life maintenance stuff is attended to, I'm somewhere between madly wound up and idiotically exhausted. It will probably take a while before the exhausted part takes over (but when it does, people in China may feel the reverberations from the crash).

Despite the 8:30 a.m. meeting (ungodly early for me), I feel pretty good about the day as a whole. I got the papers marked that I needed to; I even squeezed in a little time to spend with a few friends, first venting about how it seems the same people (i.e., us) always seem to do all the work no matter what committees we're on, then telling amusing anecdotes about our lives in general. As I suspected yesterday, I was disappointed with how I handled the revision/works-cited lesson with the first of my 101s today; I did better with the second, but still not as well as I feel like I did yesterday. Even so, I think both sections got what they needed, even if not with the same clarity and impact as yesterday' class.

The RB section is still my favorite. The student who had to leave on Tuesday showed up today with paper in hand--he was late (not to mention the late penalty on the paper), but still, he was there, so maybe the turn around is still happening, albeit slowly. As I was lecturing, I did have to ask them to zip it several times: two young men in particular were chatting, not intending to be rude or not to listen, but unaware that their chat was distracting. That sort of thing slowed the lesson down, but I still just have fun with these guys.

The other two sections also had previously seen an in-progress draft of a chapter from my dissertation, which I show them to demonstrate that writers of any level struggle to get ideas clear and have to revise, rethink, edit, and I finally got a chance to show the same pages to RB. Students are always fascinated. (I usually pass it around, but I didn't have time with RB. It is fun when I can let them look at it up close, interesting to see what they notice and are curious about.) But RB is the first of the sections to actually see the finished diss in its small-format, paperbound form. (It's more impressive in the full-size hard-cover version, but that's too heavy to lug around.) I'll share it with the other sections later: they think it's cool and it's another way to let them get a glimpse under the hood. But the RB students are the first I have ever told about the emotional aspects of the dissertation process. Students always ask how long it took (answer: because I got a grant--from the National Bank of Dad, though I don't tell them that part--and leave from my job, first draft took 3 months; revising took the next year). No one has ever asked before if I had any help or feedback, but one of my students today did (answer, I had to do the work and research, but I did have an advisor who kept saying, in essence, "You've built a very nice house here. Now just park this 747 in the middle of it and make a seamless transition from one to the other").

And because I told them that part of it, and how frustrating and difficult it was to keep having to stretch and add and rethink and do more research and figure out how to make it fit, I also told them the story of my final meeting with my advisor. I had given her one more version that I thought was final (which I'd done about 15 times before), and she started to say, "OK, good, now all you have to do is..." Tears puddled up in my eyes, and I said, "Joan, I will do whatever you tell me I have to do, but you will have to tell me exactly what to say, because nothing else is coming out of my brain." To which she replied, quite cheerfully, "Oh! Well, in that case, you're done." The students laughed--and on that note, class ended. Nice end to the class, and to the teaching part of the week as well. So I'm letting that glow linger a bit. I'm not thinking about what I want/need to do over the next three days. Tonight, I will act as if I have zero responsibilities and nothing looming. And Friday through Sunday, each day, each hour, I will prioritize as it happens. And somehow it will all get done. (The refrain: How will it? It just will. It's a mystery.)

Don't think my eyes are functioning well enough to do any reading at this point (though Barnaby Rudge is coming along nicely), so I'll probably watch something on DVD... and then to bed.