This just might be the week that does me in

I think my head may actually explode.

Yesterday: up early to work out (yay industrious me!). Grade grade grade. Lunch. Prep prep prep. Teach class. Meet with advisees. Go home. Try to bring myself to do more grading, and succeed only in part. Sleep. Dream about forgetting to go to class. (But a different class than I dreamed about forgetting to go to on Sunday night.)

Today: up early to finish grading (and the reading for class). Prep prep prep. Teach class. Go to a lecture. Grade some more. Teach another class. Meet with advisees. Answer e-mails, which are multiplying like bunnies. Get gas. Vote (fat lot of good it seems to have done me!), which entails waiting for half an hour or so amongst the very privileged demographic of my precinct. Head home, change into comfy clothes, gobble leftover pasta, and trek out to middle of ritzy East Suburbia for a choir rehearsal. Am now home, anxiously refreshing the news web pages. (Yes, yes, the anti-gay proposal was pretty much bound to pass down here, but did it have to pass so overwhelmingly?? Fuckers.) Let's hope that when I drag my sorry ass to bed, I can manage to dream about something other than forgetting to go to class.

Tomorrow: up early, not for working out, but for a meeting to prepare for a presentation I (foolishly) agreed to give later in the week, on a subject about which I am not an expert and feel I have only the most obvious of common-sense advice to give. But hey, if you need someone to get up and state the obvious, I'm your gal. Meet advisees. Read read read and prep prep prep. Somewhere else in there, prep the presentation I'm giving in a colleague's class that afternoon (something else about which I know nothing). Go home and exercise collapse catch up on the reading for Thursday's classes. Come up with something to say about it. Clear up the dribs and drabs of grading that I owe those classes. Sleep!

Thursday: Finish prepping and grading. Teach. Lunch. (Breathe!) Teach. Meet advisees. Prep for Friday's class (in which we begin Complicated Book Which I've Only Taught Once Before Years Ago). Run home for dinner. Trek back out to Ritzy Surburbia for another rehearsal. Sleep!

Friday: The morning, thank God, is largely FREE. Until that silly presentation. Class. Home. Welcome LDH with loving arms! Squeeze myself into my horrible choir dress. Out to suburbia. Sing. Home. Collapse. Sleep!

You will notice that this schedule does not include the following:

• cleaning the apartment
• getting exercise
• working on my own research, dammit, which I really want to do and it really makes me grouchy to have to put it off! (maybe I can do some tomorrow, since I know the material for tomorrow's class really pretty well...)

And really, I suppose it shouldn't be that bad, but it's just that I have no down time at all in there to help me move from one project to another. I need downtime, people. I'm not good with change, and it takes me a little bit to figure out that one project is over and I should be starting another. It's cause I'm a little slow sometimes. I need my slack time!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go refresh the news pages some more and angst about the fact that my chosen candidate came just close enough to winning to get my hopes up (the race hasn't been called yet but I'm not optimistic, people...).

Comments

[Dr M]

We're closed on Friday for Vets day ... anyone else closed?

[Medieval Woman]

Hope your week works out to where you can get just a teensy bit of slack time - I'm exhausted just reading this!

Good luck!

[Philosophy Factory]

I'm sure the weekend will feel great!

[Tenured Radical]

Sounds horrible. I think my entire first contract at Zenith was like that -- I realized when I finallly got on sabbatical that I just didn't remember large chunks of my life in the three previous years.

My advice? Cut out time on class prep, or compress it, and schedule in two mornings a week where you get up early, exercise, and write for 2-3 hours.

Oh yeah pal -- and when you have a minute that you are two blind tired to do anything else, link me. I just linked you.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Have done so, TR!

Part of the problem with this week is that I decided to try out a new Shakespearean play, instead of sticking with one I've taught a ton of times. Silly, silly me. Who needs to read more than one of those things? :-P

[profgrrrrl]

Whew. That's a lot. Hope you and LDH get in some good relaxation.

[prefer not to say]

BTW -- your blog was invoked tonight, given as an example of a "raw blog" by an untenured anonymous blogger in tonight's Midwest MLA keynote speech by Michael Berube.

I thought you should know that your psuedonym is being invoked before a live audience of over 100.

Happy weekend!

[amy]

So, did you survive?

[New Kid on the Hallway]

prefer not to say, thank you for letting me know! I'm amazed... also slightly surprised, as I don't think of myself as that raw, but hey, publicity is good. ;-)