What Now?

So, it turns out that stress is bad for the body.

Who knew?

Last week I started thinking I was getting an ear infection, but it wasn't bad enough that I felt the need to do anything about it. Or, rather, I kept thinking I should do something about it but kept forgetting to do so, because I've been pretty spacy lately.

And then this week it got really bad, but I started thinking that maybe it wasn't my ears at all but rather my jaw and that this was affecting my ears. I tend to clench my teeth unconsciously when I'm stressed, and I often feel jaw discomfort as though I can't relax my face muscles even when I have my mouth open and thus clearly aren't clenching my teeth. So maybe I'm clenching my jaw muscles even when I'm not clenching my teeth? Is that possible?

Anyway, this was a crazy, hectic, stressed-out week, and by Thursday night my jaw was so tight, especially on the left side, that it hurt to chew. And then that night  my ears hurt so badly that they kept waking me up in the night. And when I got up Friday morning, my front teeth were meeting oddly, as though my whole mandible had shifted. I haven't had such jaw pain this badly since I was at St. Martyr's, when during a particularly grim period I couldn't close the teeth on the left side for almost three weeks. And yet I didn't go to the doctor about it then, I guess since it was so clearly stress-related and I didn't think there was anything the doctor could do (other than prescribe Lexapro, which I was already taking).

But apparently I've learned something since my St. Martyr's days, because when I woke up in pain on Friday, I finally called the doctor and made an appointment for that afternoon. (And I think it's only because I'd hit all of my deadlines by Thursday after school that I could think about my health rather than the drafts-reading / advisor letters / everything else school work that had obsessed me all week.)

The good news is that I don't have an ear infection and I don't have TMJ. Yay! But the doctor gave me muscle relaxants to take at night, told me to take massive doses of ibuprofin twice a day, and instructed me to get an over-the-counter sleep guard for my teeth for immediate treatment and see my dentist next week to see about getting a custom-made sleep guard (which apparently cost around $500).

I have followed her instructions (except for the dentist, whom I'll call on Monday), and my jaw and ears are actually feeling better. The muscle relaxants pack quite a wallop but seem to do the trick. I took one on Friday night, and it was almost impossible to pull myself out of bed Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m. so that I could go proctor SATs. And then I broke out into a horrible, light-headed, cold sweat at about 6:30, which was most unpleasant! But I had a lot of chemicals in my body at that point, since I'd also gotten a tetanus and hepatitis vaccine at the doctor's on Friday afternoon in preparation for my South Africa trip in March. I tried the muscle relaxant again last night, knowing I could sleep as late as I wanted to this morning, and apparently it takes about 10 hours of sleep for it to wear off. So I don't think I'll be able to take them during the week, but the doctor said they were optional and that I shouldn't take them if I didn't like how they made me feel. I've been diligent about the ibuprofin, which she said was the more important part of the treatment. The mouth guard is fairly unpleasant, and both nights I've awakened in the middle of the night and taken it out, so I'm not thrilled at the thought of paying a dentist $500 to get one, even if it will be a better fit and more comfortable. We'll see.

What the doctor didn't say but would clearly be a good idea is to relax a little as well. Having gotten through the particularly grim stretch of deadlines last week, I actually have far less on my plate this coming week and should be able to relax a bit, but obviously the goal is to have my stress levels a little under my own control rather than at the mercy of external circumstances. I haven't quite figured out how to do that.

Here are the things that I think are stressing me out:

• D's school stuff. There's actually nothing I can do about any of this other than to be a supportive spouse, and intellectually I know that nothing is gained from working myself up into a tizzy about problems that I can't address. But being able to act on what we know intellectually is, of course, not always easy. The problem is that anxiety about her school difficulties then leads me to worry about her career and about our financial prospects and whether we'll ever be able to retire and ... and ... and. Once I start down that path, my anxiety spirals out of control, so clearly the thing to do is simply not to start down that path.

• My school stuff. Same ol', same ol' here, but it's certainly true that having a flat bunch of freshmen is making school a lot less fun than it usually feels. They are actually getting better, fortunately, but somehow my enthusiasm for them hasn't picked up much. And three preps is wearing me out, and I know that my teaching is just not as good (or at least it doesn't feel as comfortable) as last year. But I've already told my department chair that I don't want to do three different preps next year, so it's just a matter of getting through this year. And I need to be both more realistic and more forgiving about grading. One reason this week was so crazy is that I was reading drafts that my AP Comp students turned in; these were research papers, each on a different topic of the students' own choosing (although I approved them), and it seriously took me 45-60 minutes for each one; so that was 18 extra hours of work this week, and I was rushing to get them done as quickly as possible so that they had as much revision time as possible. And this particular stressor was easy to anticipate, and yet somehow I hadn't really thought about how long it would take, especially in a week in which I also had to write personal letters to the parents of my eight advisees, updating them about how their daughters were doing at the midpoint of the year. So I really need to pay more attention to the workload I'm putting on myself and to schedule that workload more carefully and be willing to spread it out a little more. I'm one of the fastest graders in the department and indeed among all of the humanities teachers, and it's okay for me to take a few more days to return work. (I wonder if I should actually consider wearing a mouth guard while I grade? I think that's when I do a great deal of my jaw clenching.) Plus, school is traditionally my sanctuary when worry over D.'s stuff gets out of control, so I need to not let stress affect that sanctuary as it did this past week!

• General adult stuff. I'm feeling less and less like a competent adult these days -- in which the definition of "competent adult" is someone who keeps the house clean, the finances straightened out, the various home projects maintained, etc. (Being an adult is not the same as being a professional; I'm very good at the latter, if fairly incompetent at the former.) I've definitely been approaching system failure ("clean all the things?"). I think my new rule on this front is that I will to do one and only one "adult" thing each day -- that's it. I must do that one thing, but I won't do any more. I think my one thing today will be to balance the checkbook.

• The South Africa trip. This I just need to calm down about so that I actually enjoy the trip when it happens. Yes, there are things that I want to get for the trip (good walking shoes, a new camera, some pants that will work well for travel but still look reasonably nice), but I'll just make each of those my "adult thing" for a day. And now I've gotten my tetanus and hepatitis shots, so that's done; I still need to go to the travel clinic on general principle (mostly to get an antibiotics prescription to have with me just in case I pick anything up), but that's no big deal. And I could always read more about South Africa, of course, but this isn't my doctoral oral exams; it's okay for me not to know everything; I've already read a lot, and if I don't read any more, I'm still in good shape to get a lot out of the trip. I think I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself with this, and there's really no need.

I have been trying to be mindful about exercise and sleep, although both of those went by the wayside this past week. But it's Sunday morning, a brand-new week, and I'll try again.

The Legally Blonde storyline

Thank you so much for the supportive comments on my last post. It was a hard week, as D. was living in anxious anticipation of a Thursday meeting with some powers at her grad program, and of course I was then living in anxious anticipation also. And the meeting could have gone better, although it certainly could have gone worse.

Here's the situation in a nutshell: D.'s grad program, which was supposed to represent this wonderful new start to her professional life, is proving a disappointment. Classes are okay if mostly not great, and her first term grades were very good. She ran into a problem early on with one professor, but it turns out that everyone has problems with this woman; she makes fun of the younger students for their inexperience and makes cutting remarks to the older students about their experience (in what seems to be some sort of anxiety about whether they know more than she does on any one point), so pretty much everyone's a loser. And, yay, it's a year-long course, so D. has her again this spring. But this horrible woman is maybe balanced out by a fabulous professor that D. loves and who clearly thinks she's great as well; she had him for a one-semester course, but she signed up for another class of his this term, so that's going to be the bright spot each week. So academic stuff is going okay, even if it's fairly disappointing on an academic/intellectual level.

The bigger problem has been field ed., which is of course the cornerstone to an MSW program, in many ways more important than courses and grades. D. had what turned out to be a really problematic placement in the fall, and the field ed supervisors at her school have handled it in a spectacularly awful way. The only "good" part about the situation is that it's become clear only in the last week that it isn't just D. who is suffering because of the field ed supervisors; no, it seems that other "returning" (i.e., older) women students -- those who don't fit the mold of the 24-year-old white women who make up the majority of the students in the program -- are also having problems. In fact, D. uncovered a few days ago the fact that the program is actually being sued by a former student, another older woman who was in a similar situation. So that's a fine how-do-you-do. It does perversely make me feel a little better to know that D. isn't being singled out for poor treatment, but that hardly makes things better on a day-to-day basis.

The Thursday meeting was pretty excruciating for her; she said it was in some ways the most personally insulting professional encounter she'd ever had (and there's some competition for that spot!), and the field ed coordinators and, unfortunately, D's advisor, maligned her character as well as her professionalism. Things were bad enough that she's actually had a couple of conversations with the lawyer who is pursuing the lawsuit, and one of the other current students is going to talk with him as well. But for now D. has decided that it's doable and better to continue in the program, to try to keep her head down and get her degree. After all, it's only a two-year program, and it does have an excellent reputation nationally as well as in Adventure City, so if she can make it through and can garner some positive references and can manage to get a really good second-year field ed. placement, she'll be in good shape for her post-school career. The lawyer had really helpful advice for her (and didn't charge her anything for the hour-long conversation they had today -- a really wonderful guy!), and she now has some pretty clear ideas about when and if she'll need to pursue things legally. In the meantime, she's got a plan about how to proceed for the rest of this year, although unfortunately not all of the things in her plan are exactly in her control; the field ed supervisors wield a great deal of power at this point, although that will be true for only another 6 months or so.

So here's the deal with the title of this blog post: On Thursday night, as D. and I were talking about the horrible meeting, I said, "Okay, this is your version of Legally Blonde, only without the stupid murder trial. You've been maligned early in your grad program, because you don't fit the ordinary student mold and because some people are abusing their power, but I think that, on your graduation day, your advisor at least (maybe not the awful field ed folks) are going to shake your hand and say, 'It's been an honor to work with you, and I regret the role I played in your difficulties last year. I look forward to observing your undoubtedly successful career. You are a credit to the profession.'"

None of that helps her pride right now, of course, but I do think that she will eventually be vindicated, and at least that conviction helps my own emotional equanimity in being a supportive spouse.

So that's the situation. Not much fun, but at least that god-awful meeting is over, and it's possible (not certain, but possible) that perhaps the worst is over. Let's hope so.

Unbloggable

I know I've been a quiet-ish sort of blogger this school year. The thing is that there's stuff going on with D. -- not stuff about the two of us, but rather about her ongoing struggle to carve out a satisfying, healthy professional life for herself -- that I can't blog about but that has been an ongoing source of stress, to her certainly but also to me. I was doing sort of a Pollyanna thing up until now, sure that most people are somehow fundamentally decent human beings and competent professionals, despite appearances to the contrary; such blind optimism was also, I hoped, helpful in counteracting D's increasing cynicism. And I thought I was being proved right as events unfolded. But new stuff has happened in the past few days that makes me despair, not just about the short-term but really about the long-term as well. I keep hoping that, some day, D. will get a real break ... but it's been a decade, and she just keeps getting knocked down by the world. She picks herself up each time (or maybe it's that the two of us pick her up), but how much longer can this go on? Or are there some people who are just the universe's punching bag?

I try very hard to keep myself at a little bit of a remove from the drama -- really, in flat-out head-in-the-sand denial some of the time -- both out of self-protection and on the theory that I'm a better support to her if I am keeping my shit together. And FGS is my safe place, where I can go hang out with people who actually are decent human beings and competent professionals. But in the last 24 hours I've been feeling inklings of a panic attack -- racing heart beat, this sort of thing. So I'm going to go stick my head in the sand again (in the form of class prep and then going to bed early), and the busy week ahead will no doubt help enormously in distracting me.

But before I go back into denial, I wanted to just toss this moment of despair out into the universe. I realize that blogging about unbloggable issues is kind of not blogging at all -- no real substance for anyone to respond to! -- but I realized this evening the extent to which I have been shutting myself off because of the strain, and so I thought I'd reach out, albeit vaguely.

Anyway, thanks for listening, even if there wasn't much to listen to. And all will be well, I know, even if not "well" in quite the ways I keep hoping. 

Conversations I had this week

• on Sunday morning, over breakfast with the soon-to-be senior deacon from church. She had been the co-chair of the ONA committee last year, the efforts of which resulted in the church's becoming officially welcoming of LGBT folks. And the church had made a few immediate changes in the wake of that decision ... and then those efforts trailed off. So she and I were getting together to decide what else we actually needed to do to fully live up to that welcoming and affirming stance we'd taken. One thing that was great is that we basically said "to hell with committees; let's just do what needs to be done," which I appreciated since I'm kind of hitting the wall with church committees. But then our conversation kept going -- we had a few minutes to kill before heading off to church -- and she asked me a couple of leading questions, and before I knew it I was sharing with her some of my complaints and criticisms of church, from my unhappiness at the church retreat a couple of years ago to my theological problems with a recent liturgical change to my honest opinion about the various ministers. It was such a therapeutic moment, to get some things off my chest to a sympathetic listener who actually has some power to do something about at least some of them. She was taking notes as we talked, and I trust her to follow up on some of these issues. Very satisfying; I actually felt much more relaxed during the church service right afterward than I have for some time in church, I think because I'd had all of those frustrations built up all this time.

• on Thursday, with three of my sophomores, about the Girl Scout cookie/ transgender brouhaha (which sounds like some sort of transgender cookie, but you know what I mean). One of my students is a Girl Scout and was taking cookie orders from a couple of her friends, and I wondered if they had heard about the controversy; they hadn't, so we talked about it a little, and they were all appalled (although I don't know that they'd be as completely welcoming if a transgender girl came to FGS -- hard to know). And then I ordered $20 worth of Girl Scout cookies from her.

• on Friday, with another group of sophomores, as we were looking at the photographs in our school art gallery's latest exhibit. The photographs are all of women and children in Afghanistan, and so this was a chance to return to some of the conversations we'd had at the beginning of the year about Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner, which had been their summer reading. At one point, as I was standing with 5 or 6 girls in front of a photo of a girls' school, we talked about why most of the adults at the school identify as feminists and also why we hope that our students will come to hold similar commitments. It was just a few minutes, but I hope that four years of such conversations eventually have some influence on our grads.

• on Thursday, over Skype, with a class at an independent school in a nearby state. The guy who taught my AP Comp summer institute (aka English Geek Camp) two summers ago had contacted me to say that he was going to use my dangerous words assignment with his class and wondered if I'd be willing to talk with his student about it. His email totally had the "ooh, I've impressed my teacher!" thrill for me. So I Skyped with them on Thursday, which required me to get a tutorial from one of my advisees beforehand so that I knew how to use the technology. I actually don't think he did the best job setting up the assignment, so I hope that my conversation with them helped. He wrote me a thank you note this morning to say how well he thought the discussion had gone and how much he appreciated my "ability to understand the widely different perspectives of the kids and address each with individual care. They felt listened to and respected." So that's nice.

• on Friday over lunch with a few colleagues, in which we talked frankly and passionately about the ways in which we feel guilty about teaching under such great circumstances to kids who are polite, attentive, well-behaved, and mostly eager to learn; are we basically selling out by being in the business of helping the children of privilege become even more privileged? Should we all be teaching in public schools instead, but if we did so would we all burn out in a couple of years and leave teaching altogether? If we kept our lovely, cushy jobs, what could/should we be doing to help those with less privilege have the same educational opportunities that every child deserves? We didn't solve the great problems of educational inequity (no big surprise), but it was a personal and honest conversation that felt important to be having.

• And then, best of all after a busy week in which I had evening obligations on three different nights, I came home on Friday and hung out on the couch with D. and just talked and talked for a couple of hours, telling her about the various conversations above and hearing about her conversations and ideas from the week. I'm glad that, after more than 10 years together, it turns out we still have plenty to talk about.

New beginnings and all that

I've been having a serious case of the winter blues, something I face every winter but has been highlighted this year by the sharp contrast between the sunny weather from Grad School area and Adventure City. I actually had a wee bit of a crying jag last night over nothing much at all, which wasn't such a great way to end 2011.

Fortunately, 2012 dawned with a beautifully sunny and unseasonably warm day, and I decided to do what I could do today to beat the winter blues and to start the new year on the right foot. Plus, when I was in grad school, I used to get a little obsessive about making sure that New Year's Day included all of the elements that I wanted the new year to include. I wasn't obsessive about that today (hey, there's progress over the years!), but it was a pretty darned good day, and I wouldn't mind the rest of the year looking much like today.

To wit, a day of mild adventure:

I started the day by going to church. It was just ... meh (more on my church ennui in a later post), but at least there was lovely music. Okay, there was no adventure there, but that was just the morning.

Then I took advantage of the gorgeous and soon-to-disappear weather by going on a First Day Hike in Adventure City. (Apparently this year for the first time, every single state in the country had at least one such hike -- very cool.) The Adventure City hike took place in a local national park that I'd never been to, and it was awesome -- that is, awesome hike, led by a helpful park ranger who had lots of tips about other places to hike in the area, and an awesome park, only about 15-20 minutes from our house, which I will definitely want to explore further. I'm thinking that getting vigorous outdoor exercise at least once a week this winter will go far in improving my outlook on the world.

Then I had another adventure of the more domestic variety: I actually cooked! For the third time in the last four days -- just imagine! With D. in school full-time and about to head into an even busier spring than her very busy fall, I need to pick up some of the cooking slack for us to maintain our domestic tranquility. I'm not that keen on cooking, actually, but so far I'm mostly just reading and following the directions in recipes, and it's worked out okay.

The rest of the day I read a bit and knitted a bit and talked with D. and started re-watching the Dr. Who series from the beginning of the reboot. And I'm heading to bed soon for a good night's sleep.

All in all, a pretty darn good day; I wouldn't mind at all if 2012 continued along the same lines.

Home from the Holidays

D. and I got back last night from spending Christmas with her mom in the larger Grad School City area. I hadn't been there in several years (as her mother pointed out repeatedly), and it turns out that my urge for grad school nostalgia is mostly gone. It probably helps that her mom actually lives miles from my grad school and that I didn't have a car, so I had no impulse to go visit former haunts. D. had a little more reason to feel such an impulse, since we were actually in the area where she had lived for awhile as an adult as well as a kid, but she's not really one for nostalgia. So we limited ourselves to borrowing D's mom's car and running out for a quick lunch to a place that we both love, and that was pretty much that. D. did have a few pangs -- for better or worse, Grad School City will always be home for her. My one big realization is that I'd forgotten what it's like to live in a place where the weather is almost always fabulous -- a joy not at all to be underestimated -- and I simultaneously missed living in that climate and felt that there was something a little odd about living that way. (Remind me of this in February, won't you?)

Oh, and speaking of nostalgia: On our flight yesterday, I suddenly realized that it was the 27th and that MLA was starting and that I hadn't thought about it at all. Not that I ever particularly enjoyed MLA -- give me a smaller conference without any hiring any time -- but for years it was part of my winter break, and here I was having forgotten about it altogether. And then, of course, I remembered that MLA was actually not starting at all because it was now in early January, which somehow seemed a further sign of how long it had been since I was in the higher ed mix. I found all of this amusing and not at all bittersweet.

Overall, it was an okay although not fabulous visit. My MIL was really glad that we were there, and we did a good job of fulfilling that daughter/daughter-in-law duty, but it was an overly long trip; I was ready to leave about 2 1/2 days before we did, and it was very good indeed to get home last night. I now have six days before school starts up again, but I'm thinking today is going to be kind of a wash since I have a sort of hangover from flying across the country -- headache, low energy, general flatness, and an unwillingness to tackle any of the home projects I so blithely put on a list of "stuff to do around the house before school starts again." I think I'll call today my readjustment day and start fresh tomorrow.

"I think ..."

You know how English and history teachers bitch and moan because, no matter what we do, our students still don't write good thesis statements? You've had that experience too, right? Okay, listen to this story:

Last week my sophomores had an in-class writing, an 30-minute informal essay. As I was passing out the essay question, a student asked, "Do we have to have a thesis?" My reply was, "Well, you have to answer the question; your answer will automatically be your thesis." Another student asked, "May we say 'I think' in this essay?" "Sure!" I said, figuring it was an informal piece anyway and that I'd already told them that my chief criteria in grading it would be evidence of thought rather than organization. Wow, you should have seen the lit-up expressions on their faces at this news! They suddenly got excited about what they were about to write. One student said passionately, "Dr. Now, I can't thank you enough."

And, another wow, their essays were so much better than they have been! They came up with actual arguments and then supported them, in many cases doing better work than I've seen all year. One student who hadn't gotten higher than a C or C+ on any writing wrote an A- essay! Okay, that was the most dramatic outcome, but almost all of the students did better than I've come to expect.

So when I returned the in-class essays, I asked the students why they'd been so excited about this essay. They all clamored (because it's a pretty clamor-y class), "We got to say what we think!" I replied that I always wanted them to write what they thought, but they were clearly unconvinced. I then asked them why we normally don't say "I think" in a thesis statement, and I was appalled by their answers, which boiled down to "because thesis statements are about facts, not opinions or ideas." Aargh! (I blame some of this on the writing instruction in their history classes, quite frankly, where they write 9th-grade essays with thesis statements such as "the Nile was important in the development of ancient Egypt" ... and that's not an exaggeration, but also there's plenty of blame to go around here.) Finally, one student (who'd had me last year and thus already knew what I was going for here) piped up to say, "We don't say 'I think' because it's our paper, so the whole thing is about what we think.'" Total stares of bemusement from much of the rest of the class (including the others who'd had me last year), who seriously didn't understand that an argument was indeed supposed to be about their ideas, that facts were their support for their ideas but weren't themselves an argument. (This is actually why I always use the phrase "support your argument" rather than "prove your thesis," because one might reasonably surmise that things that are proven are now facts, and I really want them to be thinking about arguments.)

The next day I had that same class of sophomores work in groups to come up with three or four "I think ..." statements about a particular scene in the play we were reading. Then I went around to each group and talked with them about how to convert those statements into thesis statements -- that is, just delete the "I think," and voila! Seriously, some students were literally shrieking with joy -- as I said, it's a noisy, emotive class, and they were totally ready for winter break, so I don't think the unbridled excitement was entirely about thesis statements, but there was actual intellectual excitement in the room because they had written thesis statements that reflected their own ideas about the play. (And yes, I do work at a school where sometimes 15-year-olds shriek out loud because they're excited about their thesis statements; have I mentioned lately what a good job I have?)

It was a pretty rocking class, and in the aftermath I'm thinking really seriously about the ways in which students' years of schooling in thesis-driven essays seem to have alienated them from their own sense of voice and of ownership of their own ideas. I told a history colleague about the experience, and he had a group of 9th graders deliberately include "I think ..." in their in-class essay later in the week and had much the same experience I did. 

I'm now thinking about plans to intentionally build "I think ..." into my instruction about thesis statements in my 9th- and 10th-grade classes. The goal would be to include down the road the step of then taking the "I think ..." portion back out of the final thesis statement in their final version while retaining the strong personal voice. I'm excited about the potential that this pedagogical change might hold.

Clearly I missed the boat professionally ...

... because I now know I should have been a technology consultant, so that I could rake in oodles of money to go to a school, talk with various folks for a couple of days, and then a month or so later come back to the school and give a presentation that says this:

• It's important to have a vision of what you want technological integration to look like in your school.
• Once you have that vision, it's good to set goals to help you achieve that vision.
• It's also important to set aside time to achieve those goals, really making them a priority.
• Oh, and professional development should be ongoing.
• Once you've taken these steps, you'll have achieved technological integration. Yay!

Wow, no one could ever figure this out on their own; thank goodness there are consultants to tell us these things!

This "are ya kiddin' me?!" blog post brought to you by an actual, real-life consultant who presented at this afternoon's faculty meeting. Oh, and lest you think that the vague generalities above are because I'm maintaining blogging discretion and pseudonymity -- oh no, this is a not-even-exaggerated version of his power point presentation. There was stunned silence afterward as he called for any questions; there wasn't even anything *there* to ask about! The only question I could think of was, "Umm, where's the actual substance of your presentation?," which I decided would be rude to ask, and clearly everyone else was of much the same mind. Now, in fairness, he may have had actual useful information to give to the Tech Department, with whom he had a separate meeting, but academic technology was supposed to be one of his primary areas of focus, and he really had no more to say than the bullet point above.

Normally I would have headed straight home after the faculty meeting and would thus have stewed about how outrageous it was and wondered how much we paid this guy for his drivel, but fortunately the faculty folk band had a rehearsal tonight, so instead I joined my friends (some of whom are actual musicians, unlike me) and played ukulele for an hour and a half, which was way more fun than stewing alone. And then, since D. had a school meeting tonight anyway, I went from rehearsal to the dining hall and had dinner with these and other colleagues (ah, the advantage of teaching at a boarding school!), where we bitched and moaned about the consultant but did so in a mostly humorous and not bitter way.

And the one comment I heard from every single faculty member I talked with this evening? "Dang, I should have been a consultant!"

I'm not dead yet

Wow, I SO did not mean to abandon the blog for three weeks. But ...

• first it was the week leading up to Thanksgiving, which is our end of term, and
• then I made a flying visit to my family over the holiday, hauling blue books wherever I went (when I wasn't helping my 2nd-grade niece work on her diorama, on which she then earned an S+ -- the highest grade possible, thank you very much), and
• then, back home, I finished up the grading and wrote a narrative comment for each and every student, all while beginning the new term, and
• then, just as life and school had calmed down more than had been the case the whole dang school year, one of D's social work field ed clients spilled water on her new-this-summer laptop. Oh no! And this sort of accident isn't covered by AppleCare. But D. got on the phone and worked her magic on the folks at Apple Customer Service, and by gum she got them to make a warranty exception and cover the entire cost -- saving us $750, which we really couldn't afford to spend. Yay for Apple and for D.! But of course her computer was off getting fixed up for a week, just when she needed to be writing end-of-term papers for her MSW program. So I gave her my laptop for the week, which actually made for relaxing evenings of reading in bed, since I had no computer and didn't have the television on because D. was working on her papers.

All of which led to no blogging for awhile. But life is kind of back to normal now (knock on wood!) ... or at least as normal as is typical of our lives.

Which is to say that my plans for the weekend include eating the Christmas cookies I got this week (from the Parents Association and from a former student who just got into Columbia early decision and who wanted to say "thank you" for her letter of rec), grading Odyssey explication exercises from my 9th-graders, finishing Mark Mathabane's Kaffir Boy (part of my South African trip reading), and practicing ukulele. Yeah, pretty much nothing more exciting than that, but I felt quite happy this afternoon at the prospect.

Catching up

It's been an exhausting couple of weeks ... which I'm afraid is how I begin most of my blog posts these days. Is it simply the third prep that's wearing me out this year? Is it the changes in our lives from having D. in school? (I don't really think that's it, though, because it really hasn't made such a big change day to day for me, although obviously it has for her.) Is it still about having new colleages in the department and missing my former colleague? Is it just the combined facts of having my 9th-graders being kind of flat, my 10th-grade prep being new, and my 11th-graders pushing back with all of the Occupy Wall Street business right before Parents' Weekend, so that no course is my "easy" one?

Whatever is it, I'm tired of it! By which I mean that I'm tired of being tired all of the time. And even when classes go well, I'm not getting a sustaining energy from them that keeps me going, so I just feel like I'm dragging much of the time. Bleh.

Now, one of the advantages of having a blog is that I can look back and see that apparently I was worn out all of the time last fall, and pretty much every year before that. So maybe this is just the pattern of the year, and I tend to have a sort of amnesia about the tiredness. And it's also true that I was down with a cold all last week, one that continues to linger and that has plagued some of my colleagues for a few weeks (and poor D. now has it worse than I did, and I'm afraid she probably caught it from me); so maybe I was coming down with it for awhile before I even realized it, and that's part of why I've been dragging around for awhile.

I think I'm anxious to find a source to point toward and say "ah, that's it; that's why I've been wiped out all fall" so that I can recapture my "all will eventually be well" spirit that usually sustains me through periods of stress and strain, a spirit that I seem to be largely lacking at the moment. It's not even that I feel so stressed, just kind of flat.

Blah, blah, blah -- end of annoying whininess. Here are a couple of good things that have happened lately:

* We have almost finished refinancing our house. We've only owned the house three years, and this is the second time we're refinancing, which in a way seems ridiculous but is also indicative of what's been happening with interest rates during that time. The whole process has been a bit of a strain, what with its requiring that I act like an adult who's got her act together (hmm, maybe that's another source of my wiped-out-edness lately?), but it will definitely be a good thing to have done and certainly will more than reward the effort it's taken.

* A couple of FGS social studies teachers have been dismayed for years now, as have many of us, at the way in which our students reject feminism; oh, they're glad it happened last century so that women could have the vote and all, but they see no need for it now and have very negative stereotypes about the kind of people (i.e., their teachers) who would claim to be feminists in this day and age. Some of this is because they are, of course, very protected at this point, going to an all-girls' school in a feminist environment and without understanding that the rest of the world doesn't operate as FGS does. Some of it they get from their parents, who are mostly liberal but also have a lot invested in the way the world operates now, having benefited a lot from current social structures.

Anyway, these two social studies teachers decided that their project for the year would be to "bring back the F-word" to FGS, so they got the administration and a bunch of faculty on board and did a big presentation in a school assembly, at the end of which a bunch of us stood up and took off our outer shirts to reveal a t-shirt reading "this is what a feminist looks like" on the front and "bringin' back the f-word" on the back. The students responded well to the drama of it all; it remains to be seen whether we can transform their attitudes in the longer term. It was definitely one of those "FGS is such a great school and great fit for me" kind of moments, a feeling I need to hang onto when I'm feeling flat as a pancake in other ways.

Other things to hang onto: I'm having a lovely long weekend with only a bit of work to do, since this is our end-of-term exams but the English exam isn't until Monday morning. So I'm finishing some last minute essay revisions that my AP Comp students turned in and am prepping for December classes, but it's all pretty mellow, with lots of knitting and movie-watching.

And the knitting included making my first wee baby cap -- very cute, and a worthy project to boot. Last year one of our librarians launched a project to teach the students how to knit and make caps for newborn babies who don't have access to incubators; we worked with an international relief organization, and the students really got into the project, so the librarian continued it this year. Some of my advisees and students are knitting or crocheting away, so I decided to join them. I know how to knit and purl but find it difficult to do much else or to follow a pattern, so I was skeptical about how I'd do, and I did have to rip everything out and start over at one point ... but in the end I made a tiny little cap, featuring my first-ever ribbing and decreasing. I was quite proud of myself! And since I'd bought a pound of yarn (it was on sale), I will make some more, starting this afternoon, when I will also settle down in front of the third Harry Potter movie, since I've decided to watch the whole series again straight through. Not a bad way to spend the weekend at all!

And then it's Thanksgiving, which admittedly isn't such a "break" since I'll have 66 exams to grade and comments to write but is still a change in the routine, and then we only have three weeks of classes in December before getting two weeks off for break. So I've really got several weeks before the "same ol', same ol'" hits again in January; I'm hoping that's plenty of time for me to adjust my attitude and take care of my health so that I once again become a cheerful, energetic person who's not always tired.