Come on, dickheads, lets get a REZ!

At last I have my teaching schedule and astonishingly it is sort of heavenly!!!

My psychology has always been to cram as much as possible into as few days as possible, to get everything done at once. I loathe making two trips to bring in the groceries–I would rather try to fit all the grocery bags in my arms, drop half of them, break the eggs, etc. I NEVER LEARN that it is better to just do two trips. The idea of a schedule where you work a little bit every day is very repellent to me. When I was a bike delivery person for the failed startup I got to pick my own hours and I worked 33 hours a week in three consecutive days. It was brutal! I did nothing during those days but sleep and work. But then I had a four day weekend EVERY WEEKEND and you can not tell me that is not awesome. Vast stretches, whole days, with no scheduled appointments, feels so good to me. I feel like I can’t settle in to my work with something hanging over me in the calendar. I like to do all my grading at once in epic bouts that leave my body aching and that give me nightmares.

Anyway so I’ve been biting my nails waiting for my schedule to be finalized and I just got it yesterday. Turns out all my classes are on Tues/Wed/Thur. FOUR DAY WEEKEND EVERY WEEK, my old lover! I think it will be cool. I think I can do all my prep and grading on my off days, and then just go in to campus for class, office hours, and meetings. This also is ideal because of the whole office situation. If I had to teach a bit every day it would be such a pain to have to find places on campus to do prep. This way I can do it all at home and then just knock out those three epic days (and they are epic–8:00 to 5:15 Tues/Thurs, and then teaching until 8:30 at night on Wed). It feels good to imagine just being in the office without having prep hanging over my head, to say nothing of grading. Four days off-campus a week seems like I will be able to get a lot done. HAHA FAMOUS LAST WORDS

I know I will be so slammed, as Fall semester will present several firsts for me:
– first time actually being a permanent faculty member in a department, which means meetings, curriculum development, having to really think about building relationships with my colleagues that will be stable and productive over the long term
– first time teaching grad students
– first time HAVING grad students for advisees
– first time having TAs who I’ll have to manage/guide/check up on/make sure are happy
– first time teaching three DIFFERENT classes at once. I’ve taught three at once before, but always with at least two of them being the same class. So this will be three totally different preps, which is a lot.
– first time in 3 years that I won’t be teaching a single class I’ve taught before; doubles your prep time
– first time teaching non-trad students/continuing-ed students, which means a really different pedagogical outlook/approach
– first time being course head for a vast machine of a class that involves a million guest lecturers who I will have to communicate with, wrangle, perhaps sometimes placate/mollify, I have no idea what to expect
– first time teaching at a massive state school (grad school doesn’t really count as I didn’t have to negotiate with the bureaucracy that much, in terms of teaching)
– first time teaching a class with more than 30 students in it (one has 220)

That seems like a lot of firsts, now that I have written them down. I actually am sort of wishing I hadn’t written them down, to be honest. I am feeling nervous now.

Anyway