Warming up

to another Friday – my favourite of days.  Not because it’s the end of the week – this is not a TGIF post – but because it’s a reading day.   A day devoted to reading my work and not students’.  

Although I enjoy teaching enormously, the  rhythm of a teaching day is not mine.  The rushing from class to office to class, being yanked from one topic to another by questions from left field; the need for constant diplomacy as one turns down proffered wrong answers to preserve the face of the answerer; the requirement to engage in phatic communion  with a patina of the erudite with the colleagues one meets in the corridor; these are not parts of my natural habitat. 

So I welcome a day at the desk, divided by dog walks  into sensible nameable parts like morning, afternoon and evening. 

Project: Return to life

And how daunting a project this seems, at the moment.  After the first full night’s sleep for over a week, I’m left in no doubt how much is still left for me to catch up with: my list of tasks for today is short; the tasks are simple; but I feel completely overwhelmed.  

 

I’ll turn to sure-fire antidotes: a long walk with the dogs by the river (the beach is more, tempting but the tide is in); a large glass of freshly made carrot juice; a lazy spell with a good book. 

 

And by then,

given the time of year,

it’ll be dusk,

and this

sleep

i

ness

will seem

almost legitimate. 

 

 

It’s the difference between stress timing and syllable timing, on reflection.

My last lecture of the year

... and it was a shocking mess.   I’m very disappointed.   The cause of the mess? The university server: I couldn’t access the set of slides for the lecture; and had the choice of either creating a new set of slides and so rewriting the lecture; or recreating the slides I chose the latter option only to find the file was too large to transfer to a USB (the reason Id uploaded it to the university server in the first place).  I’d so looked forward to introducing 1st year UGs to one of my favourite topics but lecturing became a nightmare.

So tonight, after two nights of not enough sleep and two long, panic-ridden days at the desk, I’m too tired to think.  More disappointment. I’d planned to relax with a light but good novel …