A Time of Great Change, Part II

Countdown to fall semester: ten days

I have received my teaching schedule for the fall. Or, rather, one of my friends has forwarded it to me, as I was not apparently on the email list for it (this happens a lot more than I'd like to admit, to be honest with you; it used to happen all the time when I was still a student there).

I am pleasantly surprised, though I'm going to be busy. Very busy.

I have three classes to teach: 011, 101, and 210 -- the latter of which is business writing. 011 is on the main campus. 101, as I knew before, is on the West campus. The business writing class is also on the west campus, but it is a night class and it is also an 8-week class which will start meeting on October 10 (if I'm reading the schedule correctly).

This is a lot to take in at once, obviously. Aside from the pay, which will be nice but is the least of my concerns right now, I've never taught 011 or 210 before. Essentially I'm being thrown into these classes with no prior instruction on how to teach them or lesson plans to follow for them. I'll pick up the books and then basically be off on a running start. I'll get a bit of prep time for the 210 class, of course, but still a running start.

So, in a way, it's very similar to when I first started teaching three years ago as a GTA. Greeeeeeeat.

I also won't have any full days off; my 011 class is on Monday and Wednesday, and my 101 class is on Tuesday and Thursday, on different campuses. When the 210 class starts up, it'll be on Tuesday and Thursday nights for three hours each time. That'll make those nights long ones; I won't get home until probably close to 11PM (par for the course for me on those days, really, as I'm used to those late nights from grad school).

Well, except for Friday. Because no English classes are taught on Fridays, and it's been like that since 2010.

I don't know anything about office assignments; what I do know is that I'll have to have copies of my syllabus done by Monday morning (the 19th) when I first start teaching, and I'll have to get those printed/copied somewhere. I don't have a set of 011 books, either, so all of that may have to wait until I actually get to campus. If possible, I'll more than likely go in sometime during this coming week to see if I can get all of this stuff sorted out. I don't really have a choice, honestly; I have to be able to see what I can get done before these classes start. As tonight is Friday night, it's not like I can hop in the car and go down there tomorrow.

This is about as official as things get right now; nothing has been entered into Banner or Blackboard yet, so I can't access my class lists or anything like that to know how many copies of my syllabi I'll need, nor do I know how many students I have total in all of my classes combined. But, I will say this: it takes an even larger weight off of my shoulders to know that I'll be doing something to keep busy, something that I'm good at and love doing, and will be getting 3X what I was originally expecting to be paid ('cause, y'know, three classes). This will do more than simply cover my monthly bills and expenses -- it will hopefully allow me to slowly begin saving money again, and will allow me to save up some cash to put toward the wedding, if I'm lucky. Will it make me financially stable? No, not by a long shot -- I'll still have to adjust my monthly loan repayment amount pretty soon, more than likely -- but it will make me stable enough for the time being to where I won't have to pinch every penny, worry about being able to keep my gas tank full, or worry about ordering a pizza once in a while due to finances. It will make me okay for a while.

As for the newspaper? I don't know. I'll have to play it by ear for a few weeks to see what's going to happen and how busy those classes will keep me. Small classes will mean more time to write and do writing-like-things. Large classes will mean I'll never sleep and will be constantly grading things with little time for anything else, especially in the second half of the semester when I'll have the business writing class under my wing as well. Still? I don't really care about the work. Yes, I'll be teaching, which means that there will be a lot of teaching work involved. And, if I learned anything as a graduate student, it's that enough strong coffee and cigarettes can and will get me through basically anything, even a total, delirious lack of sleep.

I have gotten a set of updated 101 lesson plans from Parker, and have requested 011 lesson plans and a syllabus from my friend Suri, who has taught the class before. I'll need those things to that I'm not completely lost when I go in there in a week and a half.  Parker has some great, really-detailed lesson plans, which is something I needed since I haven't taught 101 in two years.

Much of the next ten days will be spent drafting out lesson plans and syllabi; I don't really have much of a choice there. The (now former) Chair, restored to his former position of Director of the Writing Program, sent us an example syllabus for 101 a few days ago, but while it is useful in many respects, it is two years old and has a lot of parts and parameters which are no longer applicable to the class, some dates are wrong, etc. We were encouraged as GTAs (and even more as professors, now) to edit and curtail our template syllabus to whatever we wish it to be as long as we don't alter the assignments of the class. I can do this and can do it quite easily; I've only been doing it for three years now, after all. I still need a bit more information from the department and from the program itself before I can finalize a syllabus.

Also, apparently the department is an absolute mess right now; Parker will be trying to get me into the spare desk in his office so that I have a base of operations on the main campus for printing, copies, and whatever office hours I'll have. Parker is also highly-respected in the department, so he has a bit of pull as well. If I can get into the spare desk in his office, it'll all be gravy for the main campus side of things.

The problem, however, comes in around October.

As mentioned above, I have a night class on the West campus, the business writing class. That starts October 10, on Tuesday/Thursday nights. I teach in the same room, my 101 class, those mornings as well. You can probably see where this is going -- there's a nine-hour gap between my classes.

Some of you may be asking well, why don't you go home, get food, take a nap, etc between the classes and then come back?

Yeah, I could do that if I wanted to, if I wanted to drive 100 miles a day twice a week in my poor old car, and spend the gas money to do so. I'd rather not. I can't afford the gas for that, nor do I have the patience involved. Once October rolls around, I'll have to be able to set up shop somewhere in the West campus building, somewhere I can do grading and other class-related work, because I won't really be able to leave and go back home/come back. I could wander around the small town of Maize if I'd like; there's a Five Guys there, as well as a shopping center and a (huge) Goodwill store across the street, but I can't do that shit every week. For one, as much as I love Five Guys, they're expensive and I'd gain 100 pounds over the semester. For two, that wandering the town shit is going to get really old really fast. I could drive over to the main campus and back as well, but that would also put a fair amount more miles on the car, and I'd have to fight tooth and nail for parking there during the midday hours.

At least I'll always have the Goodwill right next to West campus, though, so that I can get rid of a bunch of my old stuff and/or get more dressy-like clothes. I'm not exactly sure how "dressy" I'll have to be as a professor. I mean, I have some dress clothes, but still, it's August, and even if it's in the 70s outside now, it will more than likely be in the 80s or 90s before it cools down for the fall. I want to be able to actually, y'know, dress like I normally dress, at least sometimes anyway.

Still, I will admit that I can't wait to break out the several new pairs of corduroy pants I purchased from the Goodwill in Omaha earlier this summer. And I have slowly been collecting more dressy-ish clothing to teach in, or at least clothing that isn't t-shirts-and-shorts. For example, when I was at Walmart two days ago, I picked up two sweatshirts on clearance for $3 each. I've picked up some polo shirts, some somewhat classy button-up shirts and a jacket or two as well, all on clearance. Is it enough to clothe me classily for four days per week? Probably not, but it's enough to keep me business-casual a lot of the time. I'm never going to be one of those professors who wears sport coats with patches on the elbows and sharp, sassy neckties, as good as that may make me look, because it's totally not my scene. I'm the guy who dresses nicely a few days a week, and wears hoodies/comic book t-shirts the other days. At least the first half of the semester's attire will depend heavily on the weather. It's 73 degrees right now in August. At this rate, who knows, we could be getting snow next month. After all, we had snow in May.

The weather slightly worries me, especially on those late nights the second half of the semester will bring. As you know, Kansas is a really weird state. It's not uncommon to get a snowstorm/ice storm in November or early December as the semester is wrapping up, and it's a long, dark drive back home -- especially from West campus -- if the weather is bad. I'll have to deal with that if it comes to it, of course. It's not like I'm the kind of person to cancel classes at the drop of a hat, especially if I'm already on campus (as I will be those nights) but it is something to think about, at least.

But, of course, I'm getting too ahead of myself.

Hearing the news today and seeing my schedule -- however tentative it may be at this juncture -- has made me more...tired, really, than anything else. I'd been under so much low-level stress that learning what I'll be doing, when, and where lifted those weights off of me and left me...sleepy. Like I've been in some sort of low-level panic and it's somehow, subconsciously, kept me from being able to get quality rest as of late. Last night, for example, I slept terribly. It took me forever to fall asleep, and I only got about six hours of actual rest, during which (for at least part of it) I was having some really crazy, stressful dreams. I know part of my shitty sleep cycles are due to my allergies as well, allergies which have been terrible. Even now, I have a sinus headache, and while my ear doesn't feel like it's getting infected anymore, my lungs, nose, and head have been clogged up, and my joints feel all achey as well. Allergies plus lack of quality sleep compound and feed upon one another, as you could probably guess.

This weekend, aside from taking care of updating my syllabi and lesson plans as much as I can, I don't plan on doing a whole lot. I don't have anywhere to go or anything pressing to do except pay my Amazon card bill, and there's football on all weekend. I'll probably enjoy a fair amount of that, honestly. And, since I can afford it...I might order a pizza.