Bailing

Started to develop a wicked headache as I was marking journals for today's 102--not a comment on the journals, just the weather change of the last 48 hours plus the garden-variety end-of-semester foo-raw. I keep thinking of a bit in The Word for World Is Forest, when a character is thinking of his own health, "Migraine headache, margarine breadache, ow, ow, ow." This isn't a migraine, but I want to be sure to keep it that way, so I'm bailing on my Advisement stint and heading for the hills. Class was great, and the Bright Young Man followed me back to the office to talk further about the novel, a specific area that he was trying to make sense of. We covered a lot of good territory in class, but toward the end, we got into a conversation about Prof. P and her dissertation and correspondence with Le Guin and graduate school and previous employment history.... It's what Paul calls their desire to "get under the hood," to figure us out, how we tick. It was easy enough to allow it, as they were doing so well with what they'd read. And sometimes I think it's valuable for them to see us as people, me as a person, to reveal some of my passions and the work I've gone through to get where I am.

But I didn't get enough accomplished today, so I'll be back in the office tomorrow, writing up those observations, reviewing promotion applications. I've got a socially jam-packed weekend ahead of me, which is lovely in many ways but increases the pressure on the work week. The endless refrain, yes? All I can do is take each day, each task, as it comes, and have faith that somehow it will all get done--and that I don't have to drive myself into the ground like a tent-stake to do it.

And it's not dark yet. I didn't make it out of here before full dark yesterday (the last student I saw in Advisement kept me there 30 minutes beyond my "finish" time), but I will today. Everybody sing: "Grab your coat and get your hat..."