We all know that round 'bout week 6 or 7 or whatever it is around here, the semester kicks into high gear, giving everyone just enough time to completely burn out about three days before Spring break. Excellent timing, that. While my joyous teaching schedule has recently released me from the worst (yet still comparatively easy) grading jail of the semester, I still have a boatload of stuff to do.
Priority 1: Nurse family back to health--this includes getting all three of the other members of my household over the flu (Willow is on Day 6, Rambunctious and Imperia are on Day 2, I've been prescribed Tamiflu as "a prophylactic."), as well as trying to get to hometown to visit mom, which is overdue and necessary, but still feels a bit like the cavalry arriving after the battle's over...
Priority 2: Write and Edit--I've got now less than two weeks to draft the plenary talk I'm giving, and while I have notes galore, and plenty to write about, the writing itself is still not done, which, as you know, is the hard part. I also have at least one MLA abstract to draft and submit by March 10. Additionally, I need to get the two harder-to-edit essays in the collection done, since the next stage of writing work on that picks back up in April. And all that work on the book I was planning to get done this semester? Well, so far that's been limited to doing all the rereading that teaching this graduate class has demanded, which isn't nothing, but it's not enough.
Priority 3: Stay on top of the teaching, which this week involves grading a few overdue graduate response papers, re-reading two plays and three essays, giving and grading a midterm, and prepping to read Prufrock in class, a class day in the survey that I adore.
Priority 4: Exercise--I've put on a few pounds of my summertime weightloss, probably a total of about 8, which isn't terrible, but dammit, I'm not going back up a size so quickly. But Spring is coming, and my exercise motivation is always that much better when I don't get a chill just putting on the workout clothes.
Priority 5: Committee work--since the search committee has successfully concluded its work (Yay!), I've only one major committee that is rolling right now, but it's a biggie, and one with a big impact on both the workings and the politics of the department, so I'm treading lightly on that count.
By Spring Break on the 22nd (only three weeks away!), I'll be looking forward to sitting back and cracking open a book (though probably one of the ones I'm teaching in April)
1 comment:
Our spring is on a different rhythm: insane overdrive from beginning to end. Starts off with campus visits and reappointment meetings, kicks into heavy-duty committee work that got put off from the fall but needs to get done this academic year, and is punctuated by grading flurries (and the occasional actual blizzard). T.S. Eliot was only partly right....
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