I'm No Superman

Spring semester: day sixty-three

My 210 students last night were amusing.

"You mean this is it? A ten-minute oral presentation on our project, next week, and then we're done?"

Yes, students, that's your final assignment. Then you're done. Finished. Finito. Our class ends. 

I think it's somewhat amusing, actually. If this were a larger -- or full -- roster of students, there's no way we'd be finished yet, and more than likely wouldn't be anywhere this close to wrapping up. I had twenty students in my 210 class last semester, and because several of them failed for absences or couldn't get the project finished on time, they bowed out of class near the end. This freed up time for the presentations, and remarkably we were able to get through all of them in one night because we were able to get into a classroom about an hour earlier than usual and start early. The last three weeks of the semester in the syllabus/lesson plan are devoted to presentations. With a full class of twenty-five students, at a minimum of ten minutes per presentation, that's 250 minutes. As the class is but once a week from 7:05 to 9:45, if we started right at 7:05 and every student only used the minimum ten minutes, we'd be able to get through sixteen of them one week and would have to leave the remaining nine for the next week. That would still leave an extra week at the end of the semester as a "floating day" commonly used as a placeholder in case of weather cancellations or other issues.

That's if I had a full class. I don't. My 210 class this semester has eight students. Therefore, next week we're in there for eighty minutes as all eight of them do their presentations one after another, and we're done. For the semester. Period.

It will feel nice knowing that I won't have to return to West campus on Wednesday nights for the remainder of the semester after next week, but it will feel even nicer to not have to burn that extra 48 miles worth of gasoline in the car (as that's how much it is to make a round trip to and from West campus) for the rest of the semester. It also means that after next week, I'll have Wednesdays off. Completely. Which will be good as I have enough things to do for my classes and around the house anyway. When my final papers start rolling in for my other two classes (I have five sets of papers left to grade for all of my classes for the rest of the semester, not counting final exams), I'll need that extra time. The stack of 210 projects will be graded this weekend, but I still have two papers and a practice final coming in from my 011s, and the big final paper coming in for my 102s. All of those will take time to grade -- not to mention I will be collecting journals once again from those latter two classes as well.

While my teaching schedule appears to be clearing (and it is), the work involved with the end of the semester is not. The 102 students take their final exam in class, during normal class hours, on May 1. May 6 is the last day I have to be on campus for anything before finals week, and that's only for my night 011 class to collect final papers/rewrites and to give the practice final. I don't know when the final exam will be for that class yet. It could be a full week later for all I know, and I also don't know who I'll have as a grading partner for it.

I'm really just trying to take care of things as they come, as always. Certain days have certain tasks and blocks of time metered out to take care of said tasks. That's basically my organizational system. I meter out that time so that all other time remains my own to use as I see fit -- whether I use it sleeping, eating, decompressing by watching a DVD, packing/cleaning, or doing other household stuff, it's still my time. I have to be able to keep some things separate or I will go crazy and will feel even more swamped and overwhelmed than I already do.

To those ends (and because the DVD sets have been anywhere between $4 and $15 per season on Amazon), I've been watching Scrubs from the beginning -- usually while I eat my daily meals. I've already watched through everything else I have right now as it pertains to television -- I've watched seven seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, for example, and I'm waiting on the other season sets to drop dramatically in price (or, barring that, I'll just watch them on Netflix if they're on there once Daisy and I move in together). I watched season 4 of Archer last week during my meals and in between grading papers. Scrubs has the benefit of being a really long series (I think there were nine seasons? Ten?) that I've only seen parts of, and a series that is incredibly cheap to get and watch piece-by-piece -- again, between $4 and $15 for three-disc season sets, with each season being twelve or thirteen hours long based on the number of episodes.

I really don't spend a lot of time or money on myself because I can so rarely afford to -- this is about it, honestly. If there's a show I like, I'll get a few seasons of it and watch it, and it will allow me an escape from everything hanging over my head, if only for a short while. It's the same reason I play the Pokemon games and follow the series as well -- decompression. I apparently deal with stresses differently than a lot of other people do. This is my method. Well, that and cigarettes/coffee, anyway.

I stopped at Walmart last night on the way home, as I'd planned to do, and picked up the essentials only -- the aforementioned cigarettes, cat litter, bread and almond milk, cereal, etc. Much like Daisy, I am on a "spending freeze" at the moment, in order to channel as much money as possible into moving costs and cost of living expenses for after the move and after the wedding. Anything that isn't essential or can't wait a few weeks has been put on the back burner for the time being. I live cheaply; there's no reason to spend any money I don't have to, especially as I still haven't received my state tax refund yet (I sent it off a month ago today, on March 17), and after I've paid off the majority of debt on two of my three credit cards, clearing one off completely, I'd rather not run those back up. I'll need them this summer, more than likely. I'll need the Citi Card especially, as that's what I use to pay my car insurance. That comes due again at the end of June. While I'm sure we can count on some money as wedding gifts, we can't depend on that to "get us by," so to speak. Daisy and I both have bills. Some of those bills are expensive bills.

Speaking of Daisy, apparently her first night at her "new job" within her company last night went really well, though she didn't get really any sleep beforehand. I had messages from her this morning when I woke up, but she didn't offer any details as she was going directly to bed (and it's not like I blame her, honestly). I'll talk to her about it tonight, more than likely, though I myself will more than likely be going to bed again once I come home and eat lunch. It's a chilly, dreary grey day outside, and it's supposed to rain all day. Good sleeping weather, I say. I'm tired already, and haven't really had the chance to get any good, solid rest all week (as I've mentioned here before).

So that's what's going on. I will update you, of course, with anything else that happens, over the weekend. For now, though, I'm going to hop into the Monte Carlo and head off to campus.