Fall 24 semester, Weeks 4 & 5

At the beginning of the semester, I was struggling. I hit a stride as weeks 3 & 4 continued. During week 5, I barely kept up, but I have kept up.

I collected papers for 4 out of my 5 classes, so that’s around 80 papers. I have a few students withdraw from class and a few haven’t turned in papers, so I likely responded to 75 papers. I did pretty well. I responded to the early ones early, I worked on papers each day as opposed to putting them off or doing a ton at a time, and one of the 4 classes is slightly behind, so that spread the papers out a bit.

I’m glad I got the first drafts responded to, but I put other aspects of life on hold. When I feel like I have a lot of work to do, I put the work first. Instead of gardening, I do a few more papers. Instead of doing dishes, I grade a few more papers. My house gets a little more chaotic, which at times frustrates me and at times, it’s not a big deal.

This past week, I also skipped a day of working out, and I got to school early some days. If I could count on a bit of a down time to catch up on some of my self-care, that’d be ideal. No such luck, though. My 5^th class is about to have a set of papers due. I want to get the other classes going on Paper 2; since we are writing 4 papers instead of 3 this semester, I want to get us through the second one relatively quickly, so we have time for papers 3 and 4.

In short, it feels like the little bit of relief I got from getting into the groove of school is gone. This upcoming week, I have a few “life” things to deal with. My car door isn’t opening properly, and I am taking my dog for a cancer checkup. I drive an hour one way for the vet appointment, so it should take at least 3 hours out of the day on Friday. I’m grateful I can do it, and frustrated to lose the time.

I’ve also been trying to plan ahead so that I can take a week off of school. It’s a slog between Labor Day and Thanksgiving and having a week off may help me recharge. We’re going into week 6 and I’ll likely take week 9 or 10 off, but I want to get some planning done first to make sure classes don’t suffer.  

I’ve had friends and family ask, “can you take a week off?” My answer is kind of. I get 4 personal days for the year. Since I am on campus for 4 days a week, I can use those days and still have Friday off. If I didn’t have those days, I am not beyond calling in sick. I have hundreds of sick days (literally over 200) saved up from the past 20 years and though I need 180 of those to be able to retire a year early, I have many more than I need. To my students’ benefit and chagrin (they don’t get many days off), I am typically very healthy. I say “kind of” because I get a lot of days off overall.

Those are my thoughts about weeks 4 & 5. On another note, my counter went from 8 months to 7 months 4 weeks and 1 day this week. I have under 8 months to go!

Peace Out (And In),

Julie