My Last Full-Time Semester ~ Weeks 4-7

This past week, I have been sick with a cold. I was ok Monday, but my husband had been sick the week before and my throat was starting to tickle, so I was wondering if I was getting a cold.  Tuesday my throat started to get sore; I wore a mask to class but still went to school. After class on Tuesday, I came home and slept. That’s when I knew I was too sick to go in the next day.

I stayed home Wednesday and Thursday. I thought I might do some grading, but it took all my energy to write the notes to my classes that I was cancelling.

I don’t have class on Fridays, and I felt a little better, so I did some grading. This weekend I will likely do some more grading and continue to rest so I can go back on Monday.

The upcoming week is week 8 of the semester, and since we have spring break right in the middle of our semester, I have just 1 week of school and then I’m off for a week. Since it’s so early in the year and usually still cold, I tell my classes it’s really a second winter break. It looks like it may be in the upper 50’s, so maybe it will feel like a spring break in Illinois. Either way, the time off is always nice.

Usually by this time, I have made lists of what I am going to do over break. Not this year. I am remembering that last year I had a pretty tough spring break. One of my dogs was dying—she passed later in the month—I had a colonoscopy prep and well, I don’t remember that break fondly.

This year, my second dog is recovering from surgery. I think she’ll finally be well enough to go on some longer walks so we may go hiking. That’d be good for both of us.

I’ve already been doing a bunch of knitting and since I’ve been sick, I’ve had more time to read and relax, so that has felt a bit like a break.

At the same time, I have a ton of grading to do, so I will do some work over break. It’ll make the rest of the semester, which has been hard in some ways, at least a little easier.

Weeks 4-6 were pretty good. There were definitely some ups and downs. Some of the “downs” have been that I had some students submit the first paper only after I told them I was going to withdraw them since they can’t pass the class without the papers. Some students have sent emails letting me know they were going to try really really hard to get back on track only to not show up for class or submit anything for a week afterward.

The positives, though, have been good. Lots of students did their work on time and did good work for their first papers. Quite a few have attended every single class period. We’ve had some good discussions during classes. It’s often easier for me to focus on the annoyances, but lots of things are going well.

I’ve felt pretty unsure about how and how much I want to bring up the current events going on in the US regarding the Trump presidency to my classes. I suspect having class without discussing these things can be a much needed break from the news cycle. It’s likely we’ll discuss some issues in the upcoming weeks when we are on our third paper, which deals with researching issues people have different perspectives on. What may work best is asking students what they’d like to discuss.

I have to admit I have felt pretty alone in teaching lately. I have only tangentially connected with some teachers during our knitting/crochet meetings on Wednesdays and Thursdays. We joke a bit about something going on in class or mention something unique that happened, but we don’t talk about teaching in depth. I haven’t been meeting with some teacher friends regularly and when I do, we don’t always talk about teaching.

I hope to use my time in retirement to become more connected to teachers at Prairie School and some other friends in general. I currently have the rose-colored glasses on that tell me everything will automatically be great in retirement. It’s more likely that I will need to make a good effort to reconnect with friends during that time. Since I’ve been so tired lately, I have been pretty isolated and I know I follow that trend in general, so it’ll be good to remind myself that I’ll need to make an effort to connect with people during retirement, but that after a while, it’ll be easier.

Peace Out (and In),

Julie