Second "First Day"

9 January 2018: I am teaching five days a week this semester--for the first time in a long time (not counting the fall semesters when I teach one-third of Intro to Women's Studies). The reason for my weird schedule this semester is complicated, but needless to say, I wasn't thrilled. It is one of those "taking one for the team" moments and I am getting a bit weary of that. But ever onward, I guess?

So it was a relief (that shouldn't have surprised me) that the class this afternoon was lovely: a small group of all women, each of whom I've had in class before, each of whom I am happy to see again. I even made them sit through a boring lecture on the Restoration and Eighteenth Century and they listened and applied what I said to a short poem we read. These are those kinds of students.

Here's what I am taking from this: teaching every day will absolutely challenge my ability to get my research/writing done as it will make it harder to set aside blocks of time. And it will even make it harder to get service obligations done. It will just be different and I tend to hate "different." But I am also realizing that it might be a tough-ish semester for other reasons, so maybe I ought to be happy that my TRs will now include at least 75 minutes a day in the classroom and, as I wrote about yesterday, that's almost always a good thing.