Progress of a sort

Considering the bumpy start to the day (no sleep, up very early, staggering around trying to figure out how to get students into my classes--and again, there before the big onslaught of late registrations begins), I am amazed that I actually got some work done. I'm pretty sure the T/Th 101 is set up on Banner, and I have the M/W variations of the schedule (in the syllabus, in the grade tracker, on the attendance cards) all set. I also checked--again--to see whether my memory about what we can and cannot do in terms of attendance is correct. It was, basically, but I'm glad to have made sure. (The deal there is we cannot mark a student "absent" or send the student away if he or she is physically present; the explanation was that the student might need to use attendance (or absence) from class as an alibi in a legal situation--which I don't really buy as the reason, but OK. We can, however, penalize for absences, and we can fail a student simply because that individual has missed enough classes that he or she cannot reasonably be said to have done sufficient work to complete the semester.)

I checked the numbers again, of course. (I try not to do that more than two or three times a day, but it's tempting to check much more frequently--like whenever it happens to cross my mind.) I picked up another student in the Nature in Lit, bringing that tally to nine. I still have only seven in Native American Lit. I just checked, and there are three or four other literature electives running in the same time slot, and all have low enrollment (though not quite as low as my class). The online courses seem to be filling in numeric order, as if many students are simply scrolling down to find the next available online class--and since mine is last on the list, it may fill last.

But enrollment in the electives is seriously weird. Courses that always run--American Short Story, Film in Literature--are struggling for enrollment. A few courses that sometimes struggle are doing surprisingly well. Part of me wants to grub for any elective rather than teaching two sections of comp (if Native American Lit doesn't run), but ... do I really want to teach Early American Lit (which I haven't taught since about my second or third year at NCC)? No. And there isn't anything else I'm qualified to teach that's running without an instructor. So, if Native American Lit doesn't run, I'll teach two 101s and be fine with it. If Nature in Lit also doesn't run, I'm truly fucked, as I'd have to teach three 101s. There are a few sections that would fit my schedule (apparently Cathy uncovered some hidden sections, as the last time I checked that wasn't the case), but still: that's not exactly the way I want to finish my career.

And yes, I'm still freaking out about this being my last semester. I truly don't believe it (and it turns out the medical coverage is not as splendid as I thought: if at some point in the future, full-time faculty have to pay for medical, I will too, exactly as they do), but it's now irrevocable (a word I'm beginning to hate). The odd thing is that I don't feel the freak-out on the surface at all; I'm only aware that it's going on because I am displaying symptoms of underground tremors, my self-soothing mechanisms coming online.

But I do keep reminding myself that what I experience as "freak out" can also be felt--literally--as excitement regarding a forthcoming adventure. And I remind myself that it isn't now. Now, I'm just glad to have made some progress toward semester prep and to have a sense that I'm at least moderately ready for whatever transpires. Tomorrow I'll be in the office with Cathy, and that's probably going to be the case for the balance of the week and the beginning of next. I hope we finish up early enough that I can do some clearing out of all of last semester's junk before this semester's starts piling up, and I may do some further course prep, though that's less likely. I haven't yet put together the scripts for my little instructional videos; that may be a weekend thing. As long as they're done and up before the semester starts, all will be well.

And for now, I'm going to turn off "functioning" mode and turn on "vegetating" mode. Until tomorrow.