Done ... and not done

Well, the irrevocable step has been taken: the letter stating that I will retire as of Dec. 31, 2018, has been sent to all the relevant departments and people, and a copy left on Cathy's desk. I'm both more and less unsettled by having finally made it fully official than I expected. I don't feel hesitation about having made the decision--I've spent more than a month saying out loud that it's going to happen, that my mind was made up--and formalizing it didn't cause an anxiety attack, though I thought it might. The feeling of being somewhat unsettled is deeper than that, and harder to define. I know I will be making the adjustment gradually over the next year: first moving from teaching to not (or only teaching part time)--and adjusting to the new "salary"--and then literally moving, from NY to Montana. It feels completely unreal at the moment, in large measure because it's not immediate. I do notice that I'm not quite as wound up about semester prep as I might usually be, but I also notice that once I fully dive into it, I get as caught up as ever.

And I had intended to dive in today, since I'm here on campus. I spent a little while with one of the wonderful gurus in Distance Ed (Faculty Resources Division), much of the time trying to figure out a weird formatting thing that happened when there was some sort of upgrade to the Blackboard platform (and which is going to be a bit of snorting pain in the ass to fix) and a tiny bit of time learning how to make instructional videos--which I can either do here on campus or at home. The guru did suggest making at least a loose script before I make the videos, which is a good idea--and I do want to time myself, so I keep them short and sweet.

I also made scans of some of the new material I'm going to teach in 101, and I had intended to do more work on the online portion of the classes, construct the alternative assignment schedule for a M/W 101, in case Native American Lit doesn't run, and at long last clean up the huge piles of junk that are still teetering on my desk and the radiator from spring. None of that is going to happen today. I've had two nights in a row of highly disrupted sleep (let's blame the weather), and I, well, I just don't want to do anything else, is what it really comes down to.

I handed out fliers for both electives around Advisement--and had a minor brainstorm of how to greatly improve the effectiveness of the fliers (more prominently displaying the "attributes" (for which, read "graduation requirements") that they fulfill). And I now know where to post them where they will do the most good next week when registration is a mob scene.

So all that's good. But now, I'm going to stagger home. It's barely the middle of the afternoon, but I just can't think, or see, or stand to be anywhere other than home for a while. The next three days I will be having fun with my nephew and his friends; then I'll see them off at the airport and get serious about getting ready. I'll be working on scheduling with Cathy--which is going to be more challenging than I thought, as we've added about a zillion sections of 100 for which we do not have faculty, either full time or adjunct. So, fun and frolic await. Oh, goodie.