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THINGS HAVE CHANGED:

Since I am no longer a professor in the classroom, this blog is changing focus. (I may at some future date change platforms, too, but not yet). I am now (as of May 2019) playing around with the idea of using this blog as a place to talk about the struggles of writing creatively. Those of you who have been following (or dipping in periodically) know that I've already been doing a little of that, but now the change is official. I don't write every day--yet--so I won't post to the blog every day--yet. But please do check in from time to time, if you're interested in this new phase in my life.


Hi! And you are...?

I am interested to see the fluctuation in my readers--but I don't know who is reading the blog, how you found it, and why you find it interesting. I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to use the "comment" box at the end of any particular post to let me know what brought you to this page--and what keeps you coming back for more (if you do).





Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Saved by the fumes

I got the papers done for my earlier class, but I was having a horrific time getting the last bunch done for the last class. I was getting progressively crabby and hag-ridden with anxiety, and was on the verge of canceling class but thought, no, I'll go but I'll make them leave me alone while I finish up. Got there, and all my students were piled up in the hall: turns out, the room reeked of gasoline, or fumes of some sort, and they were scared to go in there, felt it was potentially dangerous (had sort of been freaked out by a colleague of mine whose room, next door, was equally filled with fumes: he told them not to go in, it could kill them--perhaps a trifle overly dramatic). Ah, what the hell. I sent them off to work on their projects and told them their papers would be on my office door.

I just sent them an e-mail, reminding them that their next assignment is attached to their papers: for their final review sheet from their style handbook, I assigned them each a specific task, drawn from the errors I see on their papers. They have to prepare a five-minute lesson to teach to a classmate next class. (I'll be doing the same with my 101 tomorrow.) I'll be interested to see how that flies.

I still have an enormous wodge of shit to mark and will be getting even more tomorrow, but ah well. I won't be able to do anything much tomorrow: I've got a 9:30 a.m. meeting, and then in the afternoon, when I'd normally be slogging through assignments (or home napping), I need to start working on adjunct schedules with the woman whom I am replacing as evening assistant chair. So, Thursday I think I'll pull together my readers for 102, get that done and out of my hair, and then spend the weekend blazing through all the assignments I now have in hand so I can return those and start collecting final papers. Yikes and yikes and more yikes. If I think about it too much, I get panicky, so I'm trying not to think about it but just do each thing in front of me and not look up.

It's been a struggle to stay awake all day, and I should go home and directly to bed, but instead, I'm going to that high-class establishment Applebee's to have a drink and something to eat with my buddies, then home and to bed.

I do wish the anxiety would let go, though. I'm wound up so tight I can hardly move or think or breathe. And I'm not enough of a drinker to be able to consume sufficient booze to undo those knots, so I just have to try to breathe through them. Not, not, not easy.

But soon this too shall pass, and I'll be in Montana with my family, then in Washington with Ed. Now there's a soothing thought.

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