A different twist on semester prep

I know I've been gone all summer, so I expect I have about 2 readers right now, but I'm posting anyway. Semester prep has been unusually challenging this year. I'm facing the usual challenges: how to change assignments around so they work better, juggling the schedule to fit with a different semester (and a couple of weird weeks early on, when we have cancellations and "Tuesday is a Monday" adjustments because of the Jewish holidays)--and in the case of Native American Lit, working out a class I haven't taught in (I just realized) five years, so a lot of my thinking has changed. On top of that, there's the possibility that Native American Lit may not run, so I have to have two different assignment schedules for 101s: if Native American Lit doesn't run, I need to have a M/W class to maintain a four-day schedule (or teach a hybrid--but it doesn't look like the hybrid is going to run and I don't want to teach one anyway), so although I hate having my comp classes on different days of the week, I have to have a schedule for a M/W section and for a T/Th section. No matter what happens with the elective, I'm putting work into a class that I won't teach, as either I won't teach the M/W 101 or I won't teach the lit course.

But the real thing is that my entire mood about semester prep has changed radically--because I have decided that I am going to take advantage of the early retirement option currently on offer, so this will be my last semester teaching full-time. I will have to relocate after retirement--I can't afford life on Long Island on my retirement income--but I won't actually make the move until next summer, so I hope to pick up adjunct classes in the spring, and/or find other ways to supplement my income until I move (some of which I hope to take with me after I move).

I am, naturally enough, I suppose, petrified about the financial side of this equation. It's going to mean a drastic reduction in my monthly income--and even though I'll be living somewhere where the standard of living is somewhat less expensive than it is here, it's not as drastic a difference as if I were moving to a small town in the Midwest, for instance. But the bigger, harder shift is the change in identity. My identity has been wrapped around my profession for at least eighteen years--and when people ask "what do you do?" I don't want to say, "Oh, I'm retired." (Cue images of wearing polyester culottes and playing golf--not that there's anything wrong with that, it just isn't me.) I've always said I wanted to retire to, not from something--and I don't have a clear, solid "to" lined up. I may be a freelance editor, or a Breath-Body-Mind teacher, or ... there are other options. But scary as this is--and I'm surprised by how scary and difficult the decision turned out to be--all the signs say it's the right thing. I said if there was an early retirement incentive, I'd take it, and the cosmos said, "OK, here you go." It would seem rather ungrateful to say, "Oh, no: that one's not good enough." And really, if I look at this right, it's a wonderful adventure coming my way, with lots and lots and lots of freedom attached--and that sounds pretty wonderful. I'm grateful for this opportunity.

It will be hard to leave my dear friends and colleagues, of course. But it won't be hard to leave NCC, and although I'll miss the bright lights among the students, I won't miss the slog of trying to get through to the resistant and truculent, the disengaged and dismissive. I could have opted to retire at the end of this month instead (which would have meant a larger cash buyout), but that seemed too abrupt. Part of me wishes I had, though: it would have been nice to go out with that SF class as the capper to my career.

But maybe this semester will be filled with surprising delights in my classes: maybe all of them will be great. That is entirely possible.

Meanwhile, because I know it's all but over, I find it hard to summon the enthusiasm to really get my hands dirty with that semester prep--even though I know my time in which to do that is diminishing rapidly (especially because the week before I head back into the scheduling fray with Cathy, one of my nephews will be here with two friends, so I'll be acting as Aunt the Tour Guide for at least part of the week). But I also know, after all this time, that I will get it done, one way or another.

I expect I will start posting a little more regularly now that the semester is drawing nigh--and as I struggle to figure things out in terms of the assignment structures and schedules. I've already reconfigured the final paper for the Nature in Lit (and have asked my wonderful librarian colleague to construct another LibGuide for it--though I feel some guilt about it, knowing it will only be used once, unless one of my colleagues can use it to teach the class after I depart). And I have decided to use a different novel in the Native American Lit class--not Ceremony, but The Hiawatha, by David Treuer (a heartbreakingly beautiful read and more contemporary, showing that Native writers are still writing after the big wave in the 1970s and 80s). But I need to re-examine a lot for that class--and now is not the time to get into it.

In any event, I will be posting as usual throughout the fall, and possibly into the spring, if I do indeed get an adjunct class or two. And then ... well, we'll say our goodbyes later. For now, hello again, and I'll post again soon.