Y'All...I Can't Do the 14-Hour Days Any More. I Mean I Did It, But Driving Home I Thought, "This Can't Be Right Any More."

I was up at 7 for an 8 o'clock meeting, then moved the day forward in anticipation of the 7 p.m. class. I got home at 10 p.m., and I was incoherent as to what I was supposed to be doing. The drive home was long, and I kept thinking, "Was there anyone else teaching on campus when I was?" Of course, they closed the gates we regularly use, so I had to meander back around to get out.

This is all to say I'm feeling the approaching 50. I have the pep in my heart and mind of a 15-year old, but I physically feel these long days. That's never happened before. I mean, yes, I was tired, but I never felt like, "Maybe you should update your will. This lifestyle is going to do you in." It was like that. In the back of my head I am heading 24 years of people telling me, "You're going to burn out," and I simply told them I've heard that since I was 5. But, sitting in my class at 9:30 p.m. after everyone left, I simply stared at the screen (which I chose to match Elizabeth Acevedo's Clap When You Land - the mentor text for a content literacy course)(which I also noticed matched my beach pails) and thought, "What would a world of simply reading and writing look like without having to teach, too?"

Whine Whine Whine. Don't tell anyone, but I walked a 5K yesterday slowly just to prove I could. I wasn't feeling the pain, and having done a mile the day before I said to the Great Whatever, "Go ahead. Push me. I can do more." So I did. 

I did an activity with my grad students on Appleman's vocabulary quadrant, so each student was given a vocab word, the call for a sentence and definition, and the need for a drawing to remember it. Absent a student in-person, I did the word theory. To illustrate this I drew a punk, an African scholar, a feminist and a robot. My favorite is the robot who says, "You humans are silly. All intelligence is artificial." Anyway, students choose four words and began to interplay with them as the vocabulary assessment goes. All the words were ones we're likely to use often in the course.

It was a quick exercise. 

And these poor kids were given the wrong date, wrong time, and even wrong location for the class (which many of them caught and wrote to me to fix). Five minutes into class I said, "Wait a second. Let me go next door." Sure enough, all the missing people were in the wrong room....next door." Now, I have to check the academic calendar. It was down for two days, and I am thinking the one I guessed at may be wrong.

Ugh...this University. That will be my theme for 2021 (and I stole that from a senior administrator who I trust and love). 

Okay, Thursday. It's even worse today, especially tonight with your 3-places at once obligation you're going to try to pull off online. I'm not even going to predict the disaster. I'm just going to do my best. 

10 p.m. is a lousy time for dinner. I pulled in, took off my clothes, and said to Karal...wake me up when it's breakfast (which she does at 5:30 a.m.)

If you know a teacher. Love on them. It's always hard, but this year it's harder than most.