Is it summer yet?
A week past Spring Break, and I already need a vacation. Work and school and life are all happening at once, and there hasn’t been a moment in the last four or five days when I could sit still, clear my mind, and think. Not be rushing off somewhere, not be teaching, not be worrying about anything, just thinking.
I used to sit around and think all the time, which is how I’ve kept up my *amazing* habit of superproductivity, but now…it’s like I’ve forgotten how to let it all go and just think. To lose myself in something, anything. Television, even, I don’t care. I’ve gotten maybe 15 hours of sleep over the last three nights, and not for lack of trying.
I’m about 80% sure I have an ulcer. I’ve always had a healthy stomach, but for the last day or so it’s hurt like a mofo, in pretty much the exact way I would expect an ulcer to hurt. It feels as though someone has shot a hot arrow right through the center of my rib cage, then slingshot me in the same spot with a pebble. I need to go do some deep breathing or something.
This morning I proctored the first practice test for one of my new classes, starting at the kick-ass hour of 9:00 in the morning*. The superawesome surprise was that whoever called my students to remind them about their class sent half of them to the wrong hotel and told one girl not to bring her calculator. At about 9:15 my boss called to say that my other class (which had a substitute proctor, since my two classes were meeting at the same time) was locked out of their building**. I’m glad I wasn’t there, at least.
In my class there was a bit of chaos as the second half of the students started trickling in around 9:30 or 9:45, well after we’d started the test. I actually handled it pretty well, I think—everyone got to take the test (though for the late students, their sections had to be out of order), I explained to the student without a calculator her options for making up the test, and I talked to a parent in a totally responsible and not-scared way. (I’m usually pretty cowardly and tense when it comes to parent interaction.)
If this had been my first class, I know I would have flipped out. Not in a dramatic way—I would have been timid and nonconfrontational—but I would not have been able to deal with the situation with any confidence. *These* are the skills I’ve learned in my year as a teacher—it’s such a good feeling to know that there’s something practical in life I *can* handle and even do well.
Ok. This is not helping with the whole “I need to breathe” thing. I just got in from moving most of the non-furniture things from my old apartment. I’d meant to sort through it all and only move the stuff I wanted to keep, but shit happened, and I never got around to it. This place is a sea of clothes-and-crap-stuffed trash bags. I need to eat, prep new material for *another* new class I’m teaching, deal with some other things, and maybe go to bed at a reasonable hour so I can get up in time for an 8:00 lesson tomorrow morning. I scheduled that one on purpose—am I retarded or what?
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* You’d think I’d have trouble waking up that early, especially since the class is an hour from my apartment, but I was wide awake at 5:30 this morning for no good reason. Wtf?
** SAT pointer of the day: The pronouns in the sentence don’t agree. Do you see why? I refuse to change it because I think the grammatically correct version sounds silly.
March 26th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
Is there a history of lactose intolerance in your family? My dad thought for years that he had an ulcer, but he eventually learned that he just had a rather bad case of lactose intolerance.
Feel better soon!
March 27th, 2006 at 12:03 am
Not that I know of, but I’ll ask around. Thanks for the tip.