It’s been a while since I posted, mostly because I haven’t had the energy to do much of anything since my summer course began a week ago. Is it possible to be burned out after just a week?
I’m not sure why I find this course so much more taxing. I had two-hour lectures in the spring, so it wasn’t that difficult having to talk for so long. And I probably have more discussion mixed into each lecture, which spares me from actually having to speak for the whole class period.
Part of it, I’m sure, is a function of having to teach two hours a day, five days a week. That’s a big difference from previous quarters when I was only on campus two days a week.
I had a pretty nice schedule in the winter and spring, since I’d teach Tuesday and Thursday, and by early Thursday afternoon I’d be done on campus for four days.
But the grueling nature of this term’s grind began to hit me in full last Tuesday. I had something like the sensation of being done for the week until I got home and it dawned on me that, in fact, I still had three more lectures before the weekend. At least a couple of days last week I fell asleep on the couch before dinner out of sheer exhaustion.
It definitely makes me very glad that I finished all my course prep before the course began, just because I don’t feel like I have the energy to write one lecture a week, much less five. I’m not doing much, aside from going to campus and teaching for two hours everyday, and I’m probably getting a bit more sleep because having an afternoon class means I get to sleep in later.
Still, despite all those advantages, I was pretty well spent by about 4:30 this afternoon. I drank a whole pot of coffee, yet I still felt ready to nod off on the couch. Only a blood pressure-raising session of Punch-Out! (the remade NES version starring the fictional Mr. Dream in place of the disgraced Mike Tyson) managed to forestall another unplanned nap.
On the bright side, with today’s class in the books, I’ve finished six of the twenty lectures for the quarter, and I’ll be almost halfway done by the end of this week.
But it can’t be a good sign that I’m barely a week into the course and I’m already counting down the days till it’s over, can it?
