Busy, Busy, Busy

Don't cry for me, Argentina!
But awful timing has me waist-deep in papers to grade this week.
I teach four classes at one college and two classes at another, and all six classes turned in papers this week. So my days are spent teaching and grading, along with pigeon-holing workouts in between.
Think fondly of me and any blog posts I might have been writing if I weren't busy grading.
But wish me a quick green grading pen and perfect student papers.

Here's a photo of a friend of mine who's on the Appalachian Trail and took a copy of my book with her.

My novel, The Summer of France, is on sale on Kindle for 99 cents Friday through Sunday. If you haven't read it, I hope you'll give it a try and spread the word to your friends who love reading.

Heating Up

On Tuesday, I was feeling pretty good about my youthfulness as I approach another birthday this month.
I'd been to the eye doctor and he said that I had "young eyes." He said I might not ever need reading glasses.
That cockiness waned that evening.
I was teaching a glass from six to nine p.m. As I stood in front of the class, wearing a blue and gray wool sweater over a camisole, I felt a heater ignite inside of me.
Suddenly, sweat was dripping down my forehead, plastering my bangs against my skin. I surreptitiously reached up and wiped at the sweat.
I pushed up my sleeves to bare my forearms.
But I wanted to rip my sweater off and stand before the class in only my camisole.
Why was I suddenly so hot?
This entire winter, my thermostat has been running high. In bed at night, I sleep in a t-shirt and shorts while my husband is bundled in flannel sleep pants and a long sleeved shirt. Often I kick the covers off, or simply stick my feet out from under the covers, but I hadn't had an actual hot flash before.
I suspected I might be having them the week before, but I was sick, so I couldn't tell if I had a fever or hot flashes.
On Tuesday night, I had no doubt as I suffered through three hot flashes while standing in front of the class.
I had to teach the next morning, and remember the hot flashes from the night before, I wore a sleeveless blue dress, tights and a cardigan. I wore a scarf too, which was easy to unwrap and throw over my chair. But I didn't think it through. Because when I got too hot, I felt too self conscious to take off my cardigan. I just thought the students would judge me for wearing a sleeveless dress when the temperature was in the 20s outside.
By the last class that day, I simply said, "I'm too hot," and I pulled off my cardigan. No one commented on my bare arms.
Nor did they say anything about the way my bangs started to wave as they got wet from my sweaty forehead.

Here' a picture of me and 2-year-old Regan.
No more babies for me now that menopause
 has hit. Well, I wasn't going to have more anyway. 

I'm still not sure whether I should acknowledge the hot flashes when I'm teaching or if I should continue to ignore them. I don't know why I'm afraid to. It's not like they don't already think I'm really old, compared to them.
Although, in one class, when they were talking about age, they asked how old I was, and I told them, 51.
Their mouths dropped open, and one girl exclaimed, "I would have guessed 39 at the most."
Well, she's getting an A, but I still might not confide in them.

Teaching College

This year, I'm teaching a lot of college courses. Seven courses January through March. Next week I start seven again.
Sometimes I love teaching college. Like at the end of the quarter when students come up and thank me. When they send me an email, like Donald did:

I wanted to thank you for your dedication and hard work in teaching English xxx. I have a much better grasp on how to write and develop a thesis throughout an essay, especially the topic sentences. English professors, from my experience, are under appreciated and I wanted you to know how much I appreciated learning research and composition in your class.

Ah. See. Now I feel like I'm making a difference. But that was last week. And while the public college I teach at is taking spring break, the for-profit college I teach at is carrying on.
During class on Tuesday, a student named Victor came in late and proceeded to set up his computer while we continued class. After an hour and a half of teaching, I released the students for a 10-minute break. We started class again and Victor waltzed in 10 minutes after we had started class again. Within five minutes, Victor, clutching his cell phone, walked back out to the hall. I was trying to break the students into groups of three. Would Victor be there for it or not? Should I give him the assignment too?
When the students were separated into groups, I stepped into the hallway where Victor was on the phone. I stood in front of him for a minute until he asked the person on the phone to hold on for a minute.
"I feel like we're really interrupting your day with this whole class thing," I said, trying to keep it light. Usually, this approach causes students to apologize for leaving or disrupting class. Instead, Victor came out with both barrels.
"Look, I run my own company. None of my other professors mind if I leave class to take phone calls."
I told Victor, "I don't mind if you leave class to take a phone call. Just take your things with you and don't come back into class."
"Do you want to go talk to the dean right now?" he asked.
"I'm happy to go with you after class," I told him and motioned toward the classroom, full of 25 students who hadn't taken phone calls.
After class, I stopped in to see the dean. Apparently Victor was upset that I had interrupted his phone call.
At the public college, my expectations are that the students will do the work and meet the criteria. I expect them to be respectful of me and the other students.
At the for-profit college, my expectations are to kowtow to the students. And I wonder if we aren't doing them a disservice. I accept late assignments. I don't say anything when they come into class late. How am I preparing them for the real world?
The dean doesn't actually support me. He says he'll carefully word an email message to Victor that let's him know his concerns have been heard. I want to roll my eyes.
I go out and buy a lottery ticket, and if I win, my first move is to turn in my resignation at the for-profit college.

Last Day of Lollygagging

Even as I plan to spend the day watching football games, I know that the rush is coming. I know that tomorrow when school starts again, I'll start with a tiny snowball of activity and quickly be rolled into a giant avalanche.
I spent the end of last week preparing the syllabus and the online components of my classes. Then last night, I started on lesson plans. Sometimes I can re-use lesson plans from previous quarters, but I always need to tweak them. And this quarter I have a class I haven't taught since 2008, so the book has changed. That one took a long time to schedule and will take even more time to plan each week.
I'm teaching 19 hours at one college and 8 hours at the other college. Thus, the coming avalanche. However, I plan to swim steadily forward at the top of the avalanche, until I am forced to tread water and if I am buried by the avalanche, I'll stick up my ski pole so someone can dig me out.
After all, the quarter will end eventually sometime in March, and if I work hard and my students work hard, we could end up avoiding the avalanche. And the money that I make teaching all of these classes will cover my daughter's next semester of college.
How about you? Is the new year going to be a challenge?

Teacher's Pet

The thing I've always loved about teaching college is that I don't have to put up with bad students. High school teachers are stuck with students no matter how uninterested they are in the class. I can tell college students to leave if they are rude or disruptive.
Once the quarter begins, which it did today, students need my permission to join our class. I have one opening in an English Comp class and today I received three emails asking for permission to join.
The fair-minded teacher would allow the first student who asks to join the class. I'm tempted to allow the student who has the best grammar and punctuation because that will make my job easier.
Keontey said: "I would like your permission to be added to your English class." He/she spelled English with a capital E and even included the course number at the end.
The next message from Robert said: "Hi my name is Robert, i am a student going for mechanical engineering and i would like to join your english class on wednesday 12-2:15 if thats ok with you. i really need this english. w/b or give me a call at xxxx. thanks"
Capitalizations and periods are apparently not very important to Robert and the odds of him getting into my class just plummeted.
Paul wrote next: "I wanted to ask if there was a way I could get into your engl 100 hybrid class that starts on wednesday. I tried to register for it and it says that I need your approval to take the course since the quarter has already started."
Now Paul capitalized "I" so he gets credit for that, and he used a period at the end of his sentences, but he didn't capitalize engl or wednesday.
Maybe Keontey is smart enough to write a very short message to avoid mistakes, but his/her message is the closest to being correct. Lucky for me it came first so I can give permission to Keontey to join my class.
What would you do? Would you look for the better students or feel like the poor students needed your help more?

Relax

I spent the entire day grading essays, answering emails and juggling the 20 hours of classes I am teaching this quarter.
I took a break around 8 and flipped on the television. I could watch a rerun of the movie The Holiday, I could go back to grade the remaining six essays, or...I spied on the bookshelf beside the couch -- Emma.
So I popped in the movie and now I have a calm evening, kids gone to their various activities watching Emma. What could be better?

Passions

Sometimes it's hard to keep all the balls in the air at the same time.
If I decide to focus on writing, my running slips. If I decide to really train for running, my writing falls off a cliff. I won't even tell you where mothering and teaching fit in.
One of the problems is that I am most productive early in the morning. At 5 or 6 a.m. I am usually either at the computer writing or on the road running. And that is my window of opportunity.
If I write for an hour or two, I'm not likely to then go for a run. I might head out the door, but I don't make it too far.
If I go for a nice run, when I return dripping sweat, I'm more likely to sit on the front porch and read the newspaper than I am to sit at the computer and write.
Many days these past few weeks, my early morning hours have been spent preparing for class or grading papers. I'm teaching four online classes this summer, but once everyone is out of bed, if Mom is home, the expectations are that I'm not really working. I can make lunches and run to Target, and all those other little errands that eat into my day instead of grading and preparing for the classes I do have to go to teach.
Grace and I have also been following an exercise program that takes an hour to an hour and a half everyday with only one day of rest each week. We've finished five weeks of it so far. Grace is not an early riser, although I may roust her out of bed at 8 on mornings when she has to work. So this is another thing that is eating up my time.
There's always the evening, someone might suggest. But they haven't seen me in the evenings. I'm wiped out. Whether I've been teaching, grading papers, running kids to doctors appointments or meeting friends for lunch, come 8 p.m., I'm useless and am lucky to hold a book in front of my face or lift up the remote to change the channel until I lurch to bed at 10.
I guess I'm kind of the opposite of ADD, people who can't pay attention to one thing. Instead, I end up focusing on one passion at a time and the others fall to the wayside.

Showtime

Lights. Camera. You're on!
I stand blinking in front of a new college class.
More and more, teaching feels like acting to me. I have to be "on" in front of the class. I have to be prepared. I have to be entertaining yet informative.
Truthfully, I love it.
Last quarter and again this quarter, I've had four online classes at the main college where I teach. This week a new semester started at my back-up university. I have two classes where I get to be in front of actual students.
I'm always nervous before I start.
I have my lesson plans. Is this enough to get me through four hours and keep them awake? Where will I add the ice breaker that makes them get up? Where should I include the small group sessions so they start to know each other? How about the youtube videos that will make them laugh?
I dressed carefully. A linen dress with a straight skirt that nips in slightly at the waist and pooches out a little where my belly isn't quite flat. My Jambu shoes that are comfortable to stand in for four hours. My hair is curly, pulled back from my face.
The first few minutes are chaos. Students who have been reassigned to my class coming from another class. Conferring with the other professor. Done. 21 students sit before me. Some like baby birds ready to be fed. Others like Missourians with their arms crossed daring, "Show me."
There is Mulu who was in my class last session.
"How'd you get stuck with me again?" I tease.
"I knew it was going to be a tough session," he replies. "I asked for you."
I smile but I'm flattered. Mulu is from Africa and English is his second language, although his speaking and writing are excellent.
I begin class.
The computer isn't working so I can't flash the syllabus onto the screen. I move on to the next thing on my lesson plans. I ad lib. If students start to look bored, I tap dance faster, trying to keep their attention.
By the end of the evening, by 9:30 p.m. as we move to the computer lab, they are approaching me individually to clear up questions. They are handing me their prewriting for their first essays. They are asking for confirmation that they're on the right track.
I soothe them. I flash smiles. I offer words of reassurance.
And then they are gone. I sit alone in the computer lab, plugging in attendance and going over the successes and failures for the evening.
Probably 15 years ago I took a personality test that confirmed I was an introvert. That means I gain energy from being alone rather than being in a crowd. But these things can change, I think as I walk toward the car.
I call Earl so his voice can keep me company through the dark parking lot. I regale him with my performance.
The voices of the students echo in my head like so much applause.
I'll be back for an encore the following week, perhaps to a more receptive audience or to a tougher audience as they judge how successful I am at performing.