To the three students in my SAT class of twelve-ish who nod with understanding when I, with dramatic vocal inflection, make an insightful comment or reveal the “wow” behind a really useful test-taking strategy:
If it weren’t for you, I’d have all the “perk” drained out of me long before the two and a half hours were up. So thanks for that.
I am teaching four nights, three in a row. It would’ve been five, thanks to Humberto, but I will be blissfully unavailable on account of a long-scheduled tutoring lesson.
My car is sick. Have I mentioned this? Possibly. It started making a funny noise, and then the check engine light came on. It went into the shop today, and the mechanic said not only did he not hear a noise, but when he drove it around a bit, the check engine light turned off. THERE WAS A NOISE. I am not a hypochondriac about my car. Okay, maybe a little bit, but seriously, it was whirring and clicking. Abnormally.
Teaching from 6:00 to 9:30 on back-to-back nights when you have class during the day from 11:00 to 5:30 can be rough. At least I don’t have to stand up the whole time in order to learn. Sam, I think, would also prefer that I not be gone so long. Yesterday morning when I left he hid under the bed and barely looked at me when I said goodbye. This morning was better: he still stared at the ground in that depressed-but-adorable mood of his, but at least he let me rub his ears a little.
School is school. Most of my classes seem like they’ll be good ones. A couple are great, a couple crummy. I’m still waiting on my overload petition to go through—I’ll go in and bother the receptionist again tomorrow.
At the teahouse again, I find myself sitting across from a table of three people in their mid-twenties who are almost certainly algebra teachers. They appear to be planning in great detail how to teach their students a unit on functions—a list of necessary concepts, the order in which to present them, how to test for understanding, different ways of explaining functions for differently-styled learners, extra-credit assignments, and, of course, how all this will be tested on the TAKS.
I think one of them is a returning teacher and the other two are new, or at least new to teaching algebra, but all three appear to be competent in their subject and to care a good deal. [I was worried a bit when I saw one guy’s copy of Algebra for Dummies, but now I surmise that he’s using it to find examples of ways to explain these concepts simply.] Their students are very lucky. This gives me hope for the future. Huzzah.
At the wifi-enabled teahouse in which I sit, there are several fish tanks. For the last three hours, I’ve been watching (via a large mirror on the wall in front of me) a man clean two of them behind me. Cleaning a fish tank isn’t something I’d ever given much thought to, as I’ve never had fish, but it’s a rather involved process. Hoses and filters and chemicals and lots of scrubbity-scrub.
At intervals, the fish’s apparent owner came out to chat with the guy about all sorts of fishy things: tank size, water temperature, all the different types of fish they’d owned, etc., and I was struck by the depth of cleaner-dude’s knowledge. To my untrained ears, it sounded as though he knew EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD EVER about fish.
Once again it’s time to be deeply introspective, an about-face from this blog’s usual navel-gazing flavor.
I’m a bit intimidated by 2005, both the year itself and last year’s YiR. At the beginning of 2005, I declared it a “Year of Transition and Transformation,” and indeed it was.
Over the last few years I’ve noticed that moderate-to-severe sleep deprivation takes about 36 hours to work its magic. The first day after an all-nighter or a short night is usually okay—I feel a little “off” most of the day, and my sense of time is useless, but I have plenty of energy and am able to work and think clearly.
But the SECOND day…oy. The sleep dep train hits me like a ton of bricks. Or, I suppose, like a train, which would actually be worse. (Can you tell which day today is?)
The night before last (see below) I got four hours of sleep, less than half of what I usually need to wake up rested and ready to seize the day. Yesterday I was fine. I taught LSAT in the morning and tutored Calculus in the afternoon, and both sessions went quite well. I did spend most of the evening feeling all emo, though. A well of anger boiled up in me from somewhere* and I raged and ranted about various and sundry things to the walls of my apartment and on walks with Sammy for a couple hours. I was going to make a video “about my feelings,” but luckily I realized how boring that would be and fell asleep on the couch instead.
Today, on the other hand, I was hardcore sleep-deprived, even though I put in a solid eight-ish hours last night. I tutored one lesson in the morning and one in the evening, and for the few hours I spent at home in between I was woozy and more or less out of it. It would’ve been nice if I could’ve gotten some work done in that time, the biggest chunk of free time I had all weekend, but I was good for little besides snuggling with my puppy and watching the interweb go by.
When I’m sleep-deprived I also tend to eat the most ridiculous things**, often to the point of making myself sick. Today the girl at Sonic recognized me on my second visit of the day, and when I stopped by Starbucks on the way to my evening lesson because I “needed” caffeine***, I forwent a drink and instead picked up a brownie AND a cookie. Two desserts? Wtf?
I should also note that I left the apartment TWENTY MINUTES EARLY (plus the time I spent at Starbucks, so closer to thirty) for that lesson because I didn’t know how long it would take to get there and didn’t think to look it up. If you know me, you’ll recognize this as a sign of my being completely cracked out. I would never do anything like that while “sober.”
Does this happen to anyone else, this second-day effect? I’m very aware of it by now, yet it still takes me by surprise every damn time. It’d be funny if I didn’t have shit that needed to get done.
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* I don’t lose my temper; this is how. It takes a lot to make me angry, and when I do get mad, I take that anger and bottle it up. I work it out later on my own in imaginary conversations, figuring out exactly what it is that I’m pissed about so that I won’t say anything I don’t mean if I ever decide to share those feelings. It’s a good system, I think.
** I’ve noticed a strong negative correlation between my weight and how much sleep I tend to be getting (on timescales of several months, of course). Example: I’ve gotten significantly slimmer over the last six months or so, which I credit not to my eating healthier food at mealtimes but to my having gotten a decent amount of sleep, on average, resuting in many fewer sleep-dep-induced binges. (No, I don’t have an eating disorder—I just “eat stupid” sometimes.)
*** Have I discussed this already? I think it’s still in draft form. Anyway, the feeling that I “need” caffeine disturbs me, even though at this point it’s more social convention than physiological addiction that tells me when I should stop for coffee. I sense a trend, though, and it’s not pretty.
[UPDATE: Video version here. Same story, a few more details.]
I’m subbing for an LSAT class this morning, and I only found out yesterday, so I haven’t prepped the lesson very well. I really needed to sleep tonight, but even though I went to bed right at midnight for what would’ve been a not-quite-adequate seven hours of sleep, I tossed and turned (not even thinking about LSAT or anything in particular, just unable to sleep) and didn’t drift off until around 2:00.
Now I’m up early, as you can see, but not by choice. I just had the most awful nightmare I’ve had in months. Most of the dream was a long, slow story that was of course quirky, but not very emotionally charged. But then all of a sudden things went all to shit and the last few minutes shot from boredom to confusion to worry to terror. I woke up right before I found out just how imminent my death was, but as I was waking up, the dream rewound itself and replayed the last minute or so, and this time IT WAS WORSE.
I’m going to try to go back to sleep now, though I don’t know how productive that will be, as my first alarm is set to go off in half an hour. Though I feel awake at the moment, I know that I’m nowhere near well-rested, and I can’t even imagine starting my day, not to mention teaching, on the sleep I’ve had.
Despite my low expectations [see: yesterday’s whine-o-rama], today was a wonderful day, the best I’ve had in weeks. I proctored two tests, during which I got an amazing amount of work done, and taught one fabulous lesson*.
I felt strangely clear-headed and awake the whole day. I could focus for more than ten minutes at a time, and what’s more, I actually *wanted* to work on my lab report. I haven’t wanted to do schoolwork in a long, long time. I mean, theoretically, somewhere in my head, the subjects I’m learning seem fun, but every time I’ve sat down to actually complete an assignment, especially something open-ended like a paper, I’ve gotten this overwhelming feeling of distaste and frustration and omg-what-can-I-possibly-do-to-get-out-of-this.
I had to completely rewrite about two-thirds of the report. Composed in my usual “foggy” state of mind, it was full of mistakes and disorganized half-thoughts. Before, it had looked easy enough from a distance, but every time I tried to make progress I got all confused and turned around and couldn’t get hold of the big picture.
But today! What had earlier seemed like a daunting, complex task suddenly broke down into obvious steps. Some of the steps required careful thought, yes, but the problem wasn’t insoluble. I knew this stuff couldn’t possibly be as hard as the time and confusion I’d spent on it would’ve suggested. Sweet Jesus, I have half a brain left in me. Hallelujah.
Sorry, I know I’m over-dramatizing, as is my wont, but do you know how this feels? To feel yourself getting dumber every day, unable to will your lazy brain to complete even the simplest tasks? To stare at an assignment for a class you should love and find yourself wishing you were anywhere else? To realize that the reason you’re not doing your schoolwork is that you “just don’t like doing things that are hard”**? And then, all of a sudden, to have bestowed upon you a great clarity of mind, descending from out of the blue? Motivation. Energy***. FOCUS. Wow. Wowdy-wow-wow.
I don’t know what this is, but I like it. I credit the Nutella*^.
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* Woo trig! Woo anything-but-the-SAT, really. Consistency is nice, but getting a chance to teach actual *concepts* (not just tips and tricks) and make up my own “lesson plan” and practice problems every once in a while is a breath of fresh air.
** I realized this a couple days ago. It’s a stupid, stupid, feeling, and not one that anyone would ever sympathize with. “Oh, you don’t like doing hard things? Awww, poor baby, let me rub your feet.” Right. Ugh, gross. I’m hoping I was mistaken, or that this can change.
*** I was also surprised at how strong I felt today, and how much energy I had. This evening, at the end of a long day, I walked all the way across campus and back carrying my purse, backpack, and laptop…with a spring in my step. I even swapped my purse (worn across my body, under my backpack) and my laptop bag (outside my backpack) without dropping anything, *without taking off my backpack*, without even breaking stride. This is usually impossible for me.
*^ Two footnotes here. First, this morning Wendy made me an English muffin with Nutella and bananas for breakfast. It was scrumptious and, apparently, magical. Second, I’m not sure whether to capitalize ‘Nutella.’ It’s a proper name (not in the dictionary), but the logo is written with a lowercase ‘n.’ As you’ve seen by now, I’ve decided that the logo is just a picture and have chosen to stick with big ‘N.’ This is all relevant to your life somehow, I’m sure.
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EDIT (3:56) — A minute ago, as I was about to drift off to sleep, I reflected on today’s strange state of mind and thought, “Gosh, wouldn’t it suck if I had a brain tumor?” There you have it, folks: proof that I can twist ANYTHING into something about which to worry irrationally. Dammit, now I’ll never get to sleep.
DISCLAIMER: If you don’t want to read another gripey post, you should leave now. Go look at pictures of people stacking stuff on their cats or something.
I swear I’m not always this grouchy. I write more when I’m in a bad mood, is all.
It’s three weeks into the semester, and I feel drained. I don’t have time for anything but school and work. Whenever I do take a break to browse blogs or play piano or whatever, I’m crushed by guilt, because of course there are always twenty other things I should be doing at that moment. But the guilt doesn’t encourage me to get back to work, oh no. That would be too useful. Instead I retreat farther into whatever procrastinatory thing I’m doing, so that maybe for a little while I can forget about all those things waiting to be done and just occupy my brain with some sudoku or an interesting science article. Instant gratification? Absolutely. But in the meantime nothing happens except that every deadline creeps that much closer.
I’ve just realized that tomorrow, which I thought would be a semi-free day, will actually be fairly long—10+ hours of tutoring, proctoring, grading, and of course driving. I leave the house at 10:30 and won’t get back until at least 9:00. And then on Monday school starts again, and I’m teaching Monday night, yada yada.
I feel even yuckier about it because I have the specter of this lab report hanging over my head. Whenever I have a big writing project due, it absolutely consumes my life for days or weeks at a time. I spend nearly all of my time “working on the paper,” though I actually make little progress day-to-day. If this report isn’t finished tomorrow (though I don’t know where I’ll find the time)…I don’t know. Bad things will happen. But then, bad things would happen (are happening) if I didn’t have it finished today. And before that it HAD to be done yesterday. And before that it HAD to be done on Thursday. And before that it HAD to be done before Labor Day. You get the idea. Not only does the report not get done, everything else doesn’t get done along with it. I have a lab report due every two weeks for the rest of the semester. No plan yet on how to deal with this, besides the standard “try harder.”
So what, then? What is it that I want?
A day off? I just *had* two whole days off over the long weekend, and I managed to fritter those away without accomplishing much of anything.
A lighter homework load? I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree, so school is not optional. The work required of me right now is probably the least rigorous I can get without “transferring” to the University of Phoenix.
To work less? I love my job; I’m not quitting. True, I could take on fewer students. I need to learn how to say no—I do tend to bite off more than I can chew, but who doesn’t want to feel needed? This is the busiest season of the year, and we have lots of students who need tutors. I guess they don’t all *need* tutoring, but they’re paying for it, and “getting into a good college” is vitally important to many high schoolers(’ parents).
More hours in the day? Actually, yes. That would be lovely, thanks.
So I don’t know what I want, except that I want not to feel like this all the damn time. Not to feel like my life is rushing by, opportunity after moment after simple pleasure, and I’m missing out on even the scraps of free time I *could* have because I’m always buried in some escapist retreat, trying to forget that my life even exists, even as chance after chance slips away from me through my own inaction.
Does that make sense? I feel this very acutely, though I’m having trouble putting it into words. Basically, I’m frustrated that I’m too busy to do the things I want to do, but instead of gritting my teeth, doing my work, and enjoying whatever time is left over, I waste so much time trying to escape reality that I (1) ensure that I will *never* have any “real” free time and (2) continue to irreparably muck up every opportunity I’m given. Time is flying. Flying flying flying. I want it not to fly; I want it to drag. My life is short enough as it is.
It’s silly, wanting so badly for time to move more slowly that I fail to actually *live* in the time that I have. But that’s me, that’s how I roll. I…I don’t know what to say to that. I realize that I should make the best of what I have, but…if I think about it too much I get to thinking about death again, and that only leads to despair.
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. —Carl Sandburg
The part about other people isn’t incredibly relevant to my situation, but “time is the coin of your life”? That…that’s it. That’s what I feel. That’s what hits me in the gut and leaves me curled up on the floor. Time time time. Life is short. I rail against this (when I have time to think about it, which is less often these days), and I cannot deal with it. It is slowly driving me insane. Dramatic? Yes, yes it is. Judge me; I don’t care.