Ick

What an awful week--not having to do with work but with the rest of my life. The week started off with an emergency root canal for me and surgery for one of my cats. The cat is recovering nicely. I'm not bouncing back as well; at present I just hope madly that I'm infinitely better in the morning so I don't have to go in for further procedures. I thought I'd be infinitely better by now, so the fact that I'm not is upsetting, to say the least. Patience has never been my best thing, especially when I'm not comfortable.

In any event, because of the dental issues, I left immediately after class on Monday and was not on campus Tuesday or yesterday. I only came in today because I had just one class (plus a very brief spell in advisement), and the students in today's class needed to see me at least once before they begin the paper process next week.

At this point, I have no idea what comes next. I may cancel the trip to Montana, and if I do, that changes everything in terms of the syllabus (and requires a little running around to undo all the work I did to get approvals and subs so I could go). If I don't cancel the trip, I'm going to have a hell of a weekend getting prepped and ready. Tomorrow is the make-or-break day: I want to make a decision and have done with it, but I'd prefer not to make the decision when I still feel physically crappy.

Today's class was another good one. I really do like this group of students quite a bit. One of the adult women in the class came to see me just now for help with her paper: I expect she'll have a lot of trouble with it, but mostly she needs to be encouraged, at this point, the positives emphasized. And that's easy enough to do: she actually has pretty good ideas, she just is unused to thinking and working the way one must in college. I like it when I can legitimately give a student positive feedback, bolster some self-esteem that may be wobbly.

But I don't have the energy or focus at the moment to delve any further into what's going on with the students, or in my own psyche. We'll see what next week looks like.