I have one helluva week ahead… and unfortunately, the semi-regular sinus infection has arrived, despite my best efforts (1000 mg of Vitamin C daily for the last couple of weeks) to ward it off.
This weekend Daniel and I made a very quick trip up to visit my parents in Arkansas. Even though he makes fun of my home state/hometown as often as it comes up, he always manages to have a good time while there. My “twin” cousin Tracy and I made plans a few weeks ago to meet in Mountain Home to go to a Bomber football game (they lost — badly, oof!) and spend a little time with my parents. It had been YEARS since I’d seen her, and now that we’re both married and on the brink of turning 30 (we’re exactly 3 months apart in age), well, it felt like it was time to converge on the alma mater.
The Bombers… geez. The game was just horrific. I had hoped Daniel (in his virgin and perhaps last appearance at a Bomber football game) would have the opportunity to learn the words to “Bomber Man,” but sadly the team only managed to score once, and the band vanished after halftime, not sticking around to play the fight song to bring the team back on the field (Mr. Nelson would have NEVER done that!!!), so he only heard the words two or three times. PFFFTTT!!!
Oh well. At least the weather was nice and Tracy and I got to hang out together a bit.
Back to reality last night, the sinus infection was really starting to settle in, and today I had to cancel on two of my tutor students because I’m just too damned foggy in the head to be coherent in that sort of scenario.
Unfortunately for them (at least in the immediate future), I have temporarily assumed the teaching reins of my TA assignment undergraduate class. The guy who teaches that class (and to whom I am assigned part-time this semester) fell last weekend and broke his femur (OUCH!). He remains hospitalized while he goes through physical therapy to recover, and meanwhile, I’m teaching the class. We hope to have him back in a week or two at the most, and after cancelling his class last Monday, the decision was made up on high that I would take over teaching until he came back. This is a fairly huge big deal, considering they explicitly keep doc students away from teaching gigs until they’ve passed comps (something I won’t be doing for another 18 months to 2 years or so). I’m thrilled, and enjoyed teaching last Wednesday, but to have to do it with such a foggy head is unfortunate for the kids. However, I refuse to phone it in, since it would just SUCK for them to have a third-string instructor, you know? I will power through, and hopefully will get some good drugs tomorrow that will have this thing under control by Wednesday afternoon. That’s my goal/hope, anyway.
Between (my own) school, TAing, the journal, tutoring, and a few other random commitments I won’t go into now (I remain fearful the powers that be will somehow catch wind of the minutia of my life and yank my funding), things are just CRAZY, though. I’m finally making a living wage again, but it’s definitely coming at a cost, and that cost is my free time. There’s literally no longer a moment of a day that I don’t have something pressing that needs to be done. I should stress that, for the most part, I am not *complaining*. In fact, the variety of things on my plate right now is pretty much exactly the way I love my life to be; busy, but in a good, varied, interesting, and challenging way. I wouldn’t mind having one or two fewer tutor students, but as the fall semester progresses that will drop off a bit. Everything I’m doing right now fulfills two basic needs for me: First, to feel like I’m preparing myself for my future as a career academic, and second, to feel like I’m making a difference by bringing willing learners to higher education. I’m doing both from a bizarre combination of angles and with a hodgepodge of types and ages of students, but I find it all thrilling and challenging, and ultimately extremely fulfilling.
And on that note {yawn} I’m going to take some Benadryl and go to bed. Mondays are absolutely nightmarish for me; I’m on campus (school/journal/TAing) from 9 a.m. – 10 p.m. (LITERALLY), and it’s just a long and exhausting day. I may skip out of one of my night classes tomorrow so I can come home, take some drugs (that I will hopefully be procuring tomorrow), and zonk out. Nevertheless, it’s still gonna be a crazy week… but, again, a *good* crazy, as good as crazy can be. 😉