So Much To Do, So Little Time

Fall semester: day sixty

You may be asking yourself why I'm here, blogging, when I have so much to do. Even when busy, I still need time to decompress somewhat. I have a twenty-item-long to-do list, and each item on said list is something that will take a lot of time and energy to do. It's Thursday night (really, early Friday morning). I really just need to breathe a little bit.

Over the course of the next week, here are the big things I have to do:

1.) Revise/rewrite/rework my 80-page stage play, moving around scenes and trimming things that are too long or otherwise aren't necessarily as smooth as I thought they would be. It's due on Monday.

2.) Grade through +/-45 Proposal/Annotated Bibliography assignments. Should go fairly quickly, though I have to do it and record those grades before...

3.) ...I calculate my students' grades going into Paper 3 and the final exam. Adding all of those up won't be necessarily pleasant, but it'll make my grading process over the course of the next few weeks much easier.

4.) Rae, Jay, Ryan and I are all going to the university's production of "Fleeing Blue" on Saturday afternoon at 2. It's the only time that worked for all of us. I ordered the tickets this morning via my Amazon card (they'll pay me back later) and we'll have to pick them up at the theater before the performance. This is required of us -- because we are students in that Playwriting class, we cannot get out of seeing this play no matter what. What sucks is that the play starts right before the WVU/Oklahoma State football game, which means I will miss most of -- if not the entirety of -- that game. Adding to this is the fact that we're supposed to get horrific thunderstorms on Saturday as well, with the possibility of tornadoes. Yep. Tornadoes. In November. In Kansas. Welcome to the midwest.

5.) After that play, all of us (including myself) have to write a paper about it. Yes, yet another thing I must do this weekend.

6.) Come Monday afternoon, I shall reconvene with the other two members of my presentation group for our Surrealism class, as on Wednesday night we are presenting on Ben Lerner's Angle of Yaw and Harryette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary. At that time, we shall coordinate our "plan of attack" for the presentation, so to speak.

7.) Tuesday morning, I start conferences with my students. Said conferences are ten minutes each, and run from 7:40 AM to 1:20 PM. Same goes for Thursday as well, starting at 7:15 AM and running until 12:40 PM. Conferences are exhausting. One might think that not standing in front of the class for three hours that day would be less tiring, but the fact that I must sit in my office and meet with every student individually, basically telling all of them the same things over and over and over one by one is what makes it tiring. Adding to this is the fact that I still have 48 students on my roster, with several of them who are failing and really have no hope to pass the class whatsoever (mathematically speaking, several of them cannot pass even if they get perfect scores on everything else in the class), yet they soldier onwards. It makes some of those conferences quite depressing.

8.) On Wednesday, I get a bit of a reprieve -- because I had the foresight to work an extra hour in the Writing Center this week, and because I'm doing conferences on Tuesday and Thursday, I have canceled my office hours on Wednesday (I'll be seeing all of my students anyhow on the other days for their aforementioned conferences). This means I can sleep in, get well-rested, and not have to come to campus until around 3PM or so that day.

9.) Wednesday night, of course, is that presentation in Surrealism.

10.) Next Friday (the 16th) is our "reader's theater" performance. We've created flyers for it (thanks to Rae) and have made copies of them in different colors to post around campus, which we've also already done. Daisy is coming down next Thursday morning, so that by the time I get home from school she'll be here. She's coming to the "reader's theater" to see our plays read.

11.) Next Saturday (the 17th), Rae and Jay are coming up to do a double-date thing with me and Daisy. We're planning to go to the discount grocery store, and then go out to dinner at the Mexican place here in Newton. I'm guessing Daisy will go home on Sunday morning/afternoon.


Also, on Monday morning I have to be awake at 7AM to register for classes for the Spring. I only have to register for one class, really, but still.

In addition to all of this, I still have to start my research for, and figure out a topic on, the large paper we have to write in the Surrealism class. This is different than originally planned; when I signed up for that class in the spring, we were told (by the professor himself!) that the MFAs who signed up to take the class would be given the option of doing a "creative" project instead of the long paper -- like writing a portfolio of surrealist poetry, or something along those lines. That's the only real reason I signed up for this class -- I didn't want to have to write another long, tedious, boring paper for a lit class ever again. This class counts as my lit credit. Now, of course, that has changed and it is no longer an option. I certainly don't give a shit about surrealism or surrealist poets; as I've mentioned before, I like poetry that's straightforward and needs no dissection to get its message and/or true meaning across, yet does something interesting or new in its language or diction. While I do appreciate different interpretations of poems, I don't think they should be something that needs to be deciphered like I'm some sort of code-breaker or cryptographer. If you're of the same mindset as I am, you'd hate surrealist poetry. But, can I write a portfolio of poetry that's thrown together in a haphazard way, poetry that doesn't necessarily make any sense whatsoever? Of course I can. That's what I was expecting to do when we were originally told that a "creative" project would be an option. Being misled about that (probably so that more of us would take his class) really makes my blood boil.

I almost want to search through my email archives, find that email, print it out, and write at the bottom of it "This is what you told us in the spring, and we believe that it should still apply; it's the sole reason many of us signed up for your class." And then have all of us sign it before we stick it in his box.

You can probably tell from my implied bitterness that very few of us enjoy that class. It is nothing like what we were led to believe it would be, it is very dry, the discussions are always on a set path (whether we have anything to say or not about a particular poem or poet) and our own interpretations or opinions on each poem/poet are completely meaningless if they don't agree with our professor's.

Again, this is the man who is also my thesis director and who hates about 85-90% of my own poetry because it -- and I quote -- "does nothing for him."

This is probably because my poetry makes sense.

Ahem. Anyway. Tangent over.

I have still told Daisy that I don't know what's going on over Thanksgiving week, and I really don't. I know that I will have 16-18 workshop copies to go through and edit, as well as several rewritten essays to grade. That takes time; it takes a lot of time. It's also one of the reasons I've canceled my classes on Tuesday the 20th -- not only will I have my Surrealism paper to write that week, but I'll have all of those student papers to go through. As I've said before, November leaves me swamped and haggard, sleep-deprived and delirious. I still have my Playwriting class on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, too, so that's one day I can't devote to any sort of relaxation either. Because Daisy's coming down next weekend, I have to do everything I can during this week to clear my schedule while she's here.

Of course, none of that'll matter if we get blown away by tornadoes on Saturday. Again, tornadoes. In November. I swear.

Already I've been asked if I'm going to do any sort of Black Friday shopping, and my response has been something along the lines of "You're kidding, right? With what money?" While I'm not low on money, I do have to watch my budget for the rest of this month and for December, as I still have bills and other expenses, plus my car insurance comes due at the end of the year. I've also been so swamped and crazy-tired that I forgot until just this moment that today is once again payday for me -- it never crossed my mind. When I'm not calculating my expenses and paychecks, you know I've been busy.

Still, this year is very different for me on multiple levels -- I once more actually have someone to shop for. This hasn't been the case since 2010. I haven't done any real Black Friday shopping since 2009, when the ex's mother and I went out and hit up the stores around 5AM. Last year, I didn't have anyone to shop for, and didn't really have the money to do so. This year, I have Daisy -- but she has already told me not to get her anything. Hah; yeah, sure. Whatever you say, babe. I learned long ago that women -- any and all women -- never say that and mean it. It's the equivalent to saying "nothing" when you ask what's wrong. I already have a list of things and ideas for things that I've been planning for Daisy; it all depends on the next few weeks and what other ideas I can come up with.

I do find myself being a bit of a hypocrite, though; I'm always one of those people who never wants anything for Christmas or for my birthday (which is five days before Christmas). I will always have a friend or two who will send/give me something regardless -- last year, I was very blessed in that department because I was all alone and spent the holidays all alone -- but I never outright ask for anything or expect anything, and if anyone asks me what I want, I do tell them I don't want anything. This is mainly because if I need something, I get it myself rather quickly, and I am a man of few wants. I live a simple life. Most material possessions are, frankly, somewhat meaningless to me. My parents customarily send me a box of food and/or other treats that I can't get out here in the midwest, for example. Wayne and Jane will usually do something crafty for me and/or will throw in cookies or another small gift in a care package. Suri surprised me for my birthday last year by getting me a t-shirt with cats on it from Threadless. I don't ask for any of this stuff, really; I just have friends who care about me and love me, and who do it out of the goodness of their hearts. It's very nice to have a support network.

I'm more than likely not even going to send out cards to people this year -- it's not that I can't afford it, it's that I've sort of...grown out of it, I suppose? Something like that. It's impersonal. Most people keep an address list and just send cards to the addresses on it, and likewise most of those people never, ever speak to me otherwise or attempt to stay in contact with me any other time of the year. I will send cards to the important people -- my grandmother, my godfather-figure, my parents, etc. -- but other than that, there are very few people whom I send cards to anymore. I'll probably do cards for my friends and colleagues within the department as well, but otherwise that's about it. I used to make a big deal out of it, but anymore, I just don't.

Back to Daisy, though -- as I don't know how busy I'll be over Thanksgiving week, I really can't commit to her that I'll be able to visit Omaha for the big family dinner, not even two weeks out. As I've said before, when one is a grad student and a teacher, one cannot plan more than a few days ahead for anything. I know if I don't make it up there, it will disappoint her and her family as well, but when it comes to my workload and stuff that must be finished on a timeframe, my hands become tied.

"I'll be around tomorrow," she told me when she went to bed tonight, "but if you just want to focus on work, that's cool and I completely understand." I could almost hear the disappointment in her message as I read it. Daisy knows I'm going batty with all the stuff I have to do. My stress levels are redlining as I have so many tasks to complete in a small window of time -- that window being about the next month or so.

"Of course I'll be around," I told her. "I cannot and will not neglect you."

There are only so many hours in any given day -- 24, of course. There are only so many hours in a given week -- 168. One month from tomorrow, on December 10, I will be giving my students their final exam, my classes will have ended, and it will all be over. That's thirty-one days, or 744 hours.

I must take care of everything between now and the end of the semester in the next 744 hours.

It does not seem like anywhere near enough, especially not when sleeping is factored into those hours as well.

Not that I really sleep much anymore anyway.