Anticipation

Countdown to fall semester: less than 24 hours

As it is my last weekend of relative freedom, I have (ironically) been trying to take care of everything that needs to be done beforehand, things both easy and ponderous.

Twenty-four hours from right at this moment, I will be standing in a classroom again, dressed somewhat respectably, with nineteen students in front of me in desks. The last Sunday before a semester starts is, and has always been, a day filled with both excitement and fear, an anticipation that is not always completely good or optimistic. For the first half of the semester, I will spend almost the same amount of time driving to/from my classes as I will spend actually teaching my students in those classes. At least the weather is supposed to be nice for the foreseeable future.

People -- friends, colleagues, family, but nobody in the realm of academia -- have always asked me something along the lines of "Don't you get nervous? Public speaking is supposed to be the number one fear of most people."

No, I don't get nervous. Tomorrow begins my fourth year in a row of doing this teaching stuff. I know the drill at this point. The only time I was nervous or out of sorts was my very first teaching day, way back in 2010, when I showed up to my first class five minutes late because I couldn't find the building. It was also 100 degrees that day and I was wearing a thick, long-sleeved shirt, tie, dress slacks, and I had my hair slicked back, so I was basically running around to find my classroom huffing, puffing, and sweaty. Ironically, even though several of my students in that class would become longtime, trusted friends, this was their first impression of me not only as a person, but as their instructor.

After that semester I studied the locations of most buildings on campus where I'd teach in, and plotted routes that would get me from my office to class 1 and from class 1 to class 2 in the least amount of time. My 011 class tomorrow is in a building I've never taught in before, but Parker teaches over there at the same time, so I'll stroll over with him.

But nervous? No. Pshaw. I don't get nervous. Teaching is a thrill to me at this point. My plans for tomorrow are simple -- get up, pound coffee, drive to campus early, make the copies I need to make, meet some of the newbies (if applicable), see my returning friends, teach, and come home. I should be home by 1PM tomorrow at the latest, I'm guessing. No, I don't yet have an office (officially, anyhow). Yes, I'll be tired by the evening, and will probably go to bed early. 

I forced myself to go to bed relatively early last night, and again forced myself to get up somewhat early this morning (early for a Sunday, anyway), to try to get my body back on a sleep-at-night, be-able-to-get-up-at-5AM sort of cycle again. I've been somewhat successful with this over the past few days, but the weekend has sort of thrown that a bit out of whack. Tonight I'll probably be in bed by 11, and that's even fairly late for me on the night before the first day of classes.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, at least, I'll be able to move at a more languid pace in the mornings -- the drive to West campus is a bit longer (by five miles or so, give or take, though it's driving in a different direction), but I don't have to worry about parking as much out there, and won't have to fight traffic anywhere near as much as I would going to the main campus. That means I'll be able to leave the house around 8 or so.

What does the start of the semester mean for me? Well, a lot of things, actually, both good and bad:

1. Regular paychecks again (once they start, anyway). Not as much worrying about budgeting and bill-paying every month.
2. A lot more driving back-and-forth. I have to add fluids and check out my car beforehand this afternoon. This also means, unfortunately...
3. More money spent on gas. Ugh.
4. Daily social interaction with other people -- colleagues, higher-ups, my students, etc.
5. The beard comes back.
6. Much, much less nightly sleep, except on weekends and holidays.
7. Much less free time for chores and errands; shopping, for example, will have to be done on my way home from work or on the overnights of the weekends. Mowing the grass, house cleaning, and laundry will have to be done only when I can make time to do those things.
8. I'll lose weight again -- when I'm moving a lot and am not eating during the day because of teaching (during the semester I mostly subsist on coffee, cigarettes, and energy bars), I'll lose the extra pounds I put on this summer from being able to eat what I wanted whenever I wanted to.
9. Much more time spent in front of the television with football on (either college or NFL)...but, unfortunately, 90% of that time will be spent grading papers or other assignments for my students.
10. The time to write here will slowly dissipate more and more throughout the semester.
11. Much less time to spend with Daisy, either on Skype or in person.

Daisy is troubled by that last bit, as am I, but neither of us can do much about it at this point. I teach Monday through Thursday -- she gets off work for the week on Tuesday mornings an hour after I've left the house, and goes back to work on Friday evening, when my weekend is starting and I'll be swamped with whatever grading, housework, or errands I'll have to do on my time off. Once again, our schedules clash horribly, and not much can be done about that. She sleeps during the day and works at night, and I teach during the day and sleep at night. I know my body and its limits -- on Thursdays, for the first half of the semester, anyway, I will come home and crash after my week ends, and I'll be in bed by 2PM. This is what I've done every Thursday of the past two years, pretty much, when my week has ended. Getting any time with her during the second half of the semester will be even more difficult once I start teaching my 210 class on Tuesday/Thursday nights -- a class which is completely full at its cap already. Both of those nights I will be coming home and going directly to bed, especially Tuesday nights, as I'll need to get up at 5AM again the next morning. I told her that I will do everything I can to make time for her and for us, but I can only make so much time before I have stuff that I must take care of or before I become completely delirious from lack of sleep.

"We'll figure it out," she tells me.

I don't know what to say in response to that, really. She's mentioned that there's the possibility she could end up changing shifts at work due to a few different factors, and I encouraged her to take that shift change if it's offered -- briefly, anyway, before she dismissed it and said she didn't want to do it because it would be five days a week instead of four. The shift change would be from her overnight shift to an afternoon/evening shift or a normal day shift. I didn't have the chance to explain that I wanted her to do it because it may give her the opportunity to actually get weekends off (like normal people in normal office jobs) and that would be the only time she'd be able to come down here and spend time with me during the semester without me having my hands completely full with absolutely everything I have to do as a professor. As much as I would like them to, my responsibilities don't just stop. If she comes down here on her normal days off, especially during the second half of the semester, she'd never see me and we'd never get any time together. Teaching every-other-day classes on different days, instead of both on the same day, means that on the off-days when I'm not teaching one class or the other, I'm doing the work for those classes. Four mornings of the week, I'll be getting up early to drive to one campus or the other to teach, and won't be back home until the afternoon hours. On Monday and Tuesday nights I'll be grading papers and assignments for my Monday/Wednesday classes. On Wednesday nights I'll be grading papers and assignments for my Tuesday/Thursday classes, which will also extend into at least part of the weekend, more than likely. On Thursday nights for the first half of the semester, I will desperately need to be asleep, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the second half of the semester I will be on campus from 8AM to after 10PM straight through. The weekend is the only time where I won't be running back and forth to and from two different campuses, and the only time where I may not be swamped with student work to take care of. Those short three days I'm off are three of the four days she works overnights. As much as we both desperately want her to be able to come down here to get time with each other for a few days at a time, the only days she could currently do it are my absolute busiest days of the week -- and in the second half of the semester, two of those three mid-week days she has off, I won't be home at all between the hours of 8AM and 10PM.

"I can't go without seeing you until Thanksgiving," she told me a few nights ago. "That's not going to work. I need you."

"I know that," I said, "and I need you too, but I don't know how to work this out yet."

I really don't. She can come down here anytime she wants, obviously -- that's not the issue. The issue is actually seeing me when she does, and getting any time together when she does. For the first half of the semester (for example purposes here), if she came directly down here on Tuesday when she got off work in the morning, for example, she'd arrive here around the time I got home from teaching, and we'd be able to spend time together that afternoon/night before I got up at 5AM on Wednesday morning while she was still asleep and went to teach until that afternoon as well. I'd get home Wednesday hours upon hours after she'd gotten up, would be tired when I got home, yet most of the time would still not get much quality time with her as I would have to take care of everything for my Thursday class that I didn't get to do on Tuesday afternoon/evening because she came down. Our "quality time" that night would basically be her staring at me while I graded papers or did other student work alone in my room on my computer. I cannot avoid this; it has to be done. Thursday morning, I'd get up to go teach yet again while she was sleeping, and by the time I got home on Thursday afternoon at the end of my week -- mind you, she's been awake and alone once more for hours on end -- I'd be even more tired and probably cranky, and she'd either have to leave that evening or on early Friday morning at the very latest, as she works Friday nights.

This is not the sort of scenario I want, at all, when she comes to visit. I'm marrying this woman; I want to actually be able to enjoy the time I spend with her instead of making her feel like she's inconveniencing me or that she's in the way. When Daisy comes down here, I treat her like a queen -- I buy special food for her, cook it and eat it together, we go out to the movies and go shopping together (two things which have become an unspoken sort of tradition when she's here now) and we sleep until we both wake up naturally. That's just how it works. It's like a mini-vacation for both of us, where real life goes away for a few short days. Real life, and the responsibilities associated with it, never go away during the semester.

To run that same scenario for the second half of the semester is even more depressing, but I'll run it anyway: she could still come down on Tuesday if she wanted, though I wouldn't be home until around 11PM and she'd be waiting in my driveway until I got home. We'd get about an hour together at most that night before I had to force myself to sleep and get up at 5AM to leave her still asleep and go teach my Wednesday class. We'd get a few hours together Wednesday afternoon once I got home, if I wasn't swamped with student work to grade and deal with, before I once more had to go to bed early to get up early on Thursday morning, where I would leave her alone for fourteen hours straight once more before I got home after 11PM on Thursday night. She'd either leave then or would leave on Friday morning, at the latest, for work that night, giving her a total of about six to eight hours with me when I'm actually conscious and in her presence over the course of three days.

Even this fall's "fall break" doesn't offer true relief from either of these scenarios; I begin teaching my 210 class on October 10, a Thursday. "Fall break" is the following Monday and Tuesday (the 14th and 15th), which yes, I'll both have off, though she works Sunday and Monday nights. Coming down even on Tuesday morning that week would give us a few more hours together during that day, yes, but would also completely deprive her of sleep for more than 24 hours, and the second-half-of-the-semester cycle that you see above will prevail for the rest of that week anyway...and for another two months afterwards.

I don't know how to fix this, or if it can be fixed. My own schedule, and the workload associated with my schedule, are both set; they can't be altered or changed, truly, in any way. If Daisy could switch to a Monday night through Thursday night shift instead of the opposite (which is what she has now), the problems with scheduling visiting time would disappear, but it's not like I wouldn't be working and/or grading over the weekends as well most of the time. I could at least plan for weekends, though, trying to get everything cleared off my schedule to maximize time with her, such as doing as much grading and lesson planning during the week as humanly possible. However, remembering the incredible amount of finagling she had to do in order to get a few days switched for one week for my graduation back in May, that scenario doesn't seem likely either. In order to do that, as you may recall, she had to work like eight days straight beforehand. I'm not going to ask her to request days off and put her through that again just so she can come down here and visit me. She shouldn't have to work over a week straight just to get a few days off of her choosing. So, really, I'm rather lost and somewhat stumped on what to do here, or what to suggest to her.

As this is weighing heavily on my mind, I wanted to take care of absolutely everything else I could take care of this weekend before classes start tomorrow and I will no longer have anywhere near the amount of time I used to have to do things. To those ends, I have paid all the bills I've had come in the mail over the past week, and have renewed my car's registration -- the latter of which doesn't expire for well over another month, but I didn't want to get swamped and forget about it -- and in a short while I will go downstairs to work on the car itself, replenishing her fluids and giving her a sort of "checkup," so to speak, before I begin to drive her 200 miles a week for the entire semester. My laundry is done and put away, the dishwasher is half full and ready to be ran once it becomes completely full, the garbage has been taken out, and after checking the yard this morning, I won't have to mow it again for at least another week. I even ordered pizza a few nights ago, of which I still have almost a full pizza left, so I don't have to worry about cooking as much for the next few days. My "respectable" teaching outfit for tomorrow has been laid out and is ready for me. My syllabus for 011 -- as well as a few handouts -- have been printed up and are ready for copies in the morning. My class rosters (as of today) have been printed out so that I can have a set attendance list without needing to fill out my gradebook yet, in case some students add/drop this week. Finally, before I go to bed tonight, I will shower, give myself a clean shave to trim up the beard, and put on a fresh pot of coffee so that when I awaken at 5AM, I can begin pounding cup after cup to wake up. All of these things combined take care of virtually everything I can think of before I go back to work for the next sixteen weeks.

Except one thing. One horrible, terrible, frightening thing.

The cats are running out of food and litter, I'm down to my last pot or three of coffee, I have one stamp left after mailing out all my bills, and I'm on my last pack of cigarettes. I will, at some point in the next ten or so hours before I go to sleep, need to go to Walmart.

Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal. I don't like going to Walmart on weekends, but if I have to, do it, I do. It wouldn't be the first time I've had to navigate through throngs of lower-class mouth breathers who get in the way, have conversations that take up entire aisles -- oblivious to the people who need to go down those aisles to shop -- and dodge screaming kids tearing ass around the store, kids who don't speak English (and neither do their parents). And if it's not those people, it's the snooty senior citizens who think they're better or smarter than you just because they're older and richer, and because of that are some of the rudest people you'll ever meet (I'm glad most of them will be dead soon).

This is all normal, and all things I tend to experience when and if I venture to Walmart during daylight hours on a weekend. However, this weekend is different. Tomorrow is the first day of classes at the university. And I learned, long ago, never to venture anywhere close to a shopping center, especially Walmart, and especially the only Walmart in a 30 mile radius, on the weekend before classes start back up -- high school or college. Never. Never ever. You won't even be able to get through the aisles, and all of the problem folks in our society listed above turn their annoyance factors up to 11. It's almost like trying to go shopping for simple groceries and household supplies on Black Friday...if you're oblivious to the fact that it's Black Friday. This is basically Black Sunday, and I urge anyone reading this to stay away from any sort of retail chain today.

I considered putting it off and just stopping there tomorrow afternoon on my way home from campus, as Monday afternoons tend to be pretty quiet, but my cigarettes won't last that long and I'm not going to stop at the gas station or somewhere for no reason just to get more. I have electronic ones, but on the first day (read: week or so) of classes, my stress levels and exhaustion levels are going to be so high that I will need the real thing just to stay focused and to stay awake. I hate admitting that, of course, but it's true. And, more than likely, I'll probably come home tomorrow, make something to eat, and go to sleep in the late afternoon or early evening hours -- since I will not yet be used to getting up and getting off to a running start at 5AM again and twelve hours later I will be feeling that. As mentioned above, I'm going to make myself go to bed as early as possible tonight in order to maximize my sleep, but regardless of that, 5AM is fun for no one.

This means that Walmart must be the last thing I do tonight before going to bed. If I wait until after 9 or 10PM, everything will have quieted down enough for me to go get what I need, quickly, and come back home to sleep. It sort of makes me feel like a spy, operating under cover of darkness, to infiltrate an establishment at a time when the hellhounds that are other people are looking the other way and/or aren't around. I need relatively little; an in-and-out trip should take half an hour, tops.

One of my friends and colleagues is throwing a welcome-back-to-the-grind sort of party, similar to the graduation party, next weekend on Saturday night. I might go to it, though it depends heavily on what I need to do next weekend. Teaching, as I've brought up here before, is one of those professions where one has to live day-by-day, never able to plan anything outside of the classroom more than a week in advance because everything hinges on being able to get those day-to-day tasks done. In this instance, it will involve how tired I am, how much gas I have in the car, how much grading, reading, or lesson planning needs to be done, and what needs to be done around the house or otherwise.

As put-together as things sound, my work for classes and in the department this week is not yet complete; I do not yet have an office, officially, nor have I heard anything else about that (I'll have to check on that tomorrow if the office ladies aren't completely swamped on the first day). I also don't have a diagnostic exam to give to my 011 students, nor do I have their paper assignments yet, so I'll have to get those from the Director's wife -- who teaches in the same classroom I do the hour before I'm in there, coincidentally. Parker teaches in the same building at the same time I do, so at least I'll have company for the walk.

So, really folks, that's all I have for you. Most of my friends in the department who are on Facebook seem to be in hibernation or deep preparation today, as my news feed has been remarkably quiet since I got up this morning, and Daisy herself is in hibernation as well as she works tonight. I'll get to talk to her for a while before she goes to work and before I head out to Walmart (shudder) tonight, but in the meantime I'm going to go work on the car and take care of any and all other little odds-and-ends things I need to do for the day.