Hoping to resume normal service shortly
Taken what sometimes seems like a million years ago, in the window of what was once my classroom.
Decidedly lacking balance right now. It feels like I’m just lacking time, but clearly there are just as many hours in the day as there always have been. It is merely that I am trying to cram too much into those hours to keep my sanity.
When I agreed to go back and teach just one class for a few weeks, I knew I would be physically incapable of just showing up for my one hour and making an exit. But perhaps I didn’t realise just quite how many hours I would spend marking papers, talking through rewrites and just plain doing my own homework. As I was marking some papers this morning, I was reminded of that moment in science class when you learn that solids are a constant size and shape…liquids are a constant size but adapt their shape to fill the space…and a gas is constant in neither but will spread out to fill every available crevice.
Apparently preparing a nice class for an exam at the very last minute is like the last option: that one class of thirty students can easily expand to take up all of one’s hours and all of one’s brain cells, until one loses control of other basic household routines. Specifically laundry and dishes. And the end result is you leave your flat in an absolute mess so you can get to class early to answer a few more questions and on your way out, you pass the window cleaner and suddenly wish the earth would swallow you whole because you left the curtains open since you live upstairs and it’s not exactly like anyone case see your rather embarrassing laundry situation from outside. That is, unless they are standing on a ladder right outside your window.
Anyway, it seems worth it at the moment. Teaching so much in such little time isn’t particularly ideal, but their work is much improved over this little window of time. Hopefully they can forgive me for having to cover the entire story of Prometheus (and how it relates to a Simon Armitage poem) in under ten minutes. There are many things about returning to school that have made me even more grateful to be my own boss, but not the students. After all, it’s not often you teach students who ask for homework, come to class early and stay late. That seems to be the sort of thing worth a few weeks of feeling behind on laundry and dishes and blogging.
Just two lessons left until their literature exam. First of three papers. All extra crossed fingers greatly appreciated.
I’ll be back to scrappy posts soon. Of course I prefer scrapbooking to laundry!
xlovesx
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