Class, or Lack of It

Fall semester: day forty-eight

I returned to campus yesterday morning a little earlier than usual, due to going downstairs a little early to "work" on the car. I put about 1/4 of the bottle of radiator stop-leak into the radiator (that's all it would take, as it tried to overflow on me), checked to make sure the coolant was at its proper levels, and drove to school as per the usual. It didn't leak a drop all day yesterday from what I saw. Not a drop. Impressive. I'll keep an eye on it for a while, but I was satisfied. The "Low Coolant" light is still on as always, but at this point I'm pretty sure that's a sensor problem more than anything else. I'll still keep an eye on it.

When I got to school I noticed that I had some paperwork in my mailbox (as well as a bag of rice cakes from Suri, left for me as a surprise). The paperwork was for class advising for the spring, which takes place this week instead of next week or later. This meant that I had to start prepping for what I'm going to take in the spring, like now. Okay. No biggie.

As part of the delight of showing up super-early to campus on any given day, teaching or otherwise, I tend to have a little bit of time to get extra things done. As I was there early yesterday morning, I pulled out my advising folder (read: the folder that only gets touched twice a year) and opened the online class schedule to start looking things up. Barring any unforeseen changes or requirements, this should be my schedule come January:

1. English 805, Poetry Workshop (the fourth, and last, one I'll have to take), 3 hours
2. English ### , Writer's Tutorial: Poetry (the visiting writer course), 3 hours
3. English 681, Editing American English (with an awesome professor), 3 hours.

Hoo boy, folks, that's a light semester. The only real time-intensive work I'd be doing over the spring semester would be for my own students and possibly for the editing course (which is really, much like the course title implies, editing), which is taught by the same professor I took during fall last year and for whom I was able to write a 20-page paper on Dr. Manhattan's big blue dick.

Workshop should be the same workshop as I was used to before this semester -- our professor poet extraordinare returns to instruct it, and it should be much of a return to form.

The visiting writer is a really unique course; it counts for three hours of credit, but it doesn't begin meeting until April (generally) and it's only a month long. In it, we sit down with a writer who has joined the department for that month and that month only, once a week, and basically talk about our poetry for an hour. That's it. Last spring, we had this guy, and it was an absolute blast. Not only was it fun and very interesting, but it allowed me to really look at my poetry from a different perspective and try to branch out into different styles and subject matter, make different line edits, etc.

I was going to add on the Playwriting course, but it isn't offered in the spring. If I want to use that as my enrichment course, I'll have to wait until fall. Actually, if I want to use anything as my enrichment course, it looks like I'll have to wait until next fall, the first semester of my third year -- unless for some reason I want to take twelve hours in the spring instead of nine...which I really, really don't want to do if I can avoid it.

I did consider it, though; there are a number of courses open that I'm at least passively interested in, but not very many. Not enrichment courses, mind you, but extra courses. The problem is that they're all lit courses, and while I may need one or two more of those before I graduate, that's generally what third year will be used for, for me -- getting my thesis hours and whatever's left to take out of the way, including that enrichment course...unless I'm told otherwise by my advisor. My main point is that I want a semester, just one, free of any sort of lit or survey course where I have to write twenty-page papers. I've got two of those this semester. I don't like it. It's not fun. I actually want some free time again that doesn't occur in the middle of the night between class days. While I may have to write a paper or two for the editing course, my guess is that it's not going to be anywhere near as long, difficult, or time-consuming as my papers are this semester.

The workshop is on Tuesdays from 4:30-6:50. It'll be the third time we've had a day/time change for the workshop -- the first semester here, it was Wednesdays from 7:05-9:45. Second semester, Wednesday 4:30-6:50. This semester it's back to the original night class time on Wednesday again.

The editing course is on Wednesday from 4:30-6:50. The visiting writer course is set on our own time/day for whatever works best with our schedules. I'm teaching Tuesday/Thursday mornings again at 9:30 and 11. This means, if all goes as planned, that next semester I will have much the same daily schedule as this semester, without the late-night classes involved twice a week. Here's a rough outline of how it could, not will, look:

Monday: OFF.

Tuesday: Teach 9:30 and 11, probable Practicum/Office Hours, Workshop 4:30-6:50.

Wednesday: Other Office Hours, Writing Center Hour, Editing 4:30-6:50.

Thursday: Teach 9:30 and 11, then go home, or meet with visiting poet when he/she arrives in April. Possible Thursday afternoon/evening class if I need to take an extra one.

Friday: OFF.

As you can see, there's a lot of wiggle room and leeway in there for adjustments and/or other needed activities. You'll also notice that my Tuesdays and Thursdays, barring any changes, are flipped between this semester and spring. This semester, on Tuesdays I teach, then turn around and come home. Next semester Tuesday is long, but on Thursdays I can turn around and come home to start my weekend early.

It all depends, obviously, if I can get it to work out that way, the way I want it. As mentioned previously, there may be unforeseen complications that I wouldn't otherwise expect. I do think, however, I can make it work -- at least I hope so, anyway, as I need a break from these long, always-constantly-something-to-do semesters of reading tons of books and writing lengthy papers.

Anyway.

It is 2:14 AM. I went to bed around 2PM and got up around midnight, as I couldn't sleep anymore after that point. This is good; it means I have slept a shitload and am now wide awake to take care of my tasks for the day -- tasks which include grading through a stack of quizzes and a few late workshop copies, possibly grading rewritten papers (as I have three or four of those), taking a shower, and readying myself for the day ahead of me. In addition to performing my self-maintenance on the car for the coolant stuff, I also stopped at the gas station on my way home and aired up all the tires a little more, as they were all starting to droop or otherwise look/feel low, so the car is in as tip-top shape as I can make it right now for the time being. Let's hope it can stay that way for a while.

There is something else I forgot to mention in yesterday's post, and that's packages. Over the light(er) weekend of work I had, I did a fair amount more of cleaning, and found a ton of mailing envelopes that either I or the former girlfriend bought long long ago and put away in storage, as well as some other interesting, thoughtful things I had laying around the house that I meant to send out ages ago, or otherwise have no use for (but others will). So, I've assembled about five or six packages that will be going in the mail over the course of the next few weeks to some friends and family members -- two of which, one for my friend Jane and another for my friend Amber -- I won't even have to pay for, as I found an entire sheet of old, unused 37-cent stamps (from like eight years ago) that I can coat their small bubble mailers in. Can't use the stamps for anything else at this point, so why not, right? The first wave of said packages will be on their way in the mail this week, with the other (read: much, much bigger/more expensive-to-mail) ones to be sent off between now and Thanksgiving, roughly, depending on when I have the money and time to take them to the post office. They're like early Christmas presents, as I may not even be able to send cards to half the people I usually do this year due to lack of money.

I like being able to do things for my friends out of the blue and for no real reason. My friends have helped me out in so many ways over the years when I've needed them to, and they help keep me sane when I'm figuratively all alone out here in Kansas. Yes, it does cost me some money to do these sorts of things, but most of the time that's negligible compared to everything my friends have done for me.

On that note, it's time to go take care of business and start my tasks for the day.