Hot Hot Heat

Fall semester: day three

By the time I got home yesterday morning after teaching my first 101 class of the semester, my mind and body were -- as if by muscle memory -- in weekend mode. That's because I'd already made my two trips to campus and back for the week, and had taught both times, so my mind and reflexes were like okay, your week's over now.

No, no; no, it's not. That's my body thinking it's on its old, grad student schedule from last year, of only needing to go to campus twice a week for a few hours each time to teach. My week is only half over.

I haven't had to go to campus four days a week in over two years. More than that, I've never had to teach four days a week before. The entire process of everything I do now is completely different than what I've done before. My body and mental state still need to get used to it, hence why I was subconsciously ready to start my weekend at 11AM on a Tuesday morning.

My sleep schedules are all kinds of fucked up right now. Monday night I came home and went to sleep until 10PM before I got up, stayed up, and taught yesterday, came home, and passed out again around 2PM on the couch, then went downstairs until around 9PM to sleep. Now it's after midnight and I'm wide awake. My alarm is supposed to go off at 5AM, and yet I'm up here typing away. Whether I go back down there for a several-hour power nap or not remains to be seen.

I suppose, at this early juncture of the semester, I can afford myself this. Tuesday night has become my "hump day" of the week, where I reach the week's midpoint. I've now learned that until I start teaching my night class in October, Monday and Wednesday will be my "long days," and that's only because I have to get to campus dreadfully early in order to be able to park. No, I don't like this, especially since I still do not officially have an office (which I'll get to). This means I'm just there, with nowhere to put my stuff, nowhere to put a coffee pot and sit down at a desk, nowhere for my laptop or anything of that nature. For around five hours total, including the time I teach (an hour, at most, for that). Really, I won't even notice this time when I get an office, as having an office again will allow me to actually relax, sit down, get up and move around when I need to, visit with colleagues, etc. But now? Being there with nowhere to go, when I have to be there regardless, is maddening.

I've been given a minimal update on the office situation, at least. The colleague who I'll more than likely be sharing the office with is fine with my presence there (from what I've been told), especially since we won't really cross paths that often or possibly at all due to our differing schedules. However, we need to try to find a second desk to put in there, even if it's a tiny corner table or something, so I have somewhere to work from. It is, as I mentioned, a tiny made-for-one-person office. And I really don't want to intrude on anyone's space; if I didn't need somewhere to go in the mornings I'm there, I wouldn't be incredibly insistent on having an office at all. But, sadly, I do need one, and my students need somewhere they can go to talk to me for "office hours" scenarios, if and when those scenarios arise. At the very least I need somewhere I can set up three things: my laptop, my small laser printer, and my coffee pot. That's it, really. It's all I need for an office. I don't have books or paperwork as a student anymore, and whatever teaching books and papers I need for the day are in my bag. I already have a spare office chair ready to go in Parker's office, which I'll need to fetch as soon as I get the key to my new one. Whenever that may be, of course.

In other news, it's been incredibly hot this week. Yes, it's been nice and cool for the past month or so, with rain and highs in the 60s and 70s, which has been wonderful not only for my comfort levels but stress levels and electric bill as well. Of course, now that classes have started back up, there's not a cloud in the sky, it's muggy as fuck, and the temperature reaches the high 80s by noon. For the rest of the week the temperatures are supposed to top out in the low-to-mid-90s every day with fairly high humidity. As mentioned previously, it's after midnight and it's still 75 outside with 74% humidity. This would be welcomed in, say, the second half of the semester as a respite from the otherwise fall-and-winter-like weather of possible early snowfall, ice storms, and howling winds, but for the first week back to school, while pretty, it is torturous to be out in every single day when one has to dress respectably in slacks and nice button-up shirts. As you know, my house becomes a sauna when it gets hot outside, whether the house is closed up or with the windows open. It doesn't matter either way. The temperature in my Man Cave right now is 89.6 degrees, and that's after I ran the air conditioner for a few hours earlier this evening. Because of this, dressed or undressed, I'm almost constantly coated in a thin layer of sweat. My body got too used to those highs in the 60s and 70s for the majority of the past month, and grew to crave that again, to physically need those cool temperatures and rains in order to be comfortable.

Of course, in two or three months when it only reaches 30 degrees for the high and I can't keep it warmer than 65 in the house at any given time, I will be cursing that weather too. It's almost impossible for me to stay constantly comfortable, but all of the cooler, rainy weather this past month did it for me. That's what I love. Perhaps I should move to Scotland.

While I was gone to teach yesterday morning (only for about three hours, perhaps less), apparently Pete and Sadie got into some sort of huge fight. I came back home to find that my Man Cave door was open (the latch no longer works properly, so if they try hard enough, they can get the door open) and my room a mess. Pete had knocked over my trash can and had knocked half the stuff off my desk, and one of them had sprayed on the floor in front of my printer -- something they only do when they're fighting hardcore. Sadie, even fourteen hours later, will growl, grunt, snort, and hiss violently if Pete even looks at her or gets closer to her than about ten feet away. I know it's between the two of them, because sweet and innocent Maggie, who would never hurt a fly or cause any trouble whatsoever, routinely cuddles up to me or Sadie, sometimes Pete as well, and Sadie doesn't bat an eye. I don't know what's going on; cat spat, it seems. Pete always looks at me, and at Sadie, like "what's she being a bitch about?" when this sort of thing occurs.

Believe it or not, this happens about four or five times a year, roughly. Most of the time it's over in a matter of hours, if not minutes, but I've seen it last as long as a month before -- a month of hearing their screaming fights in the night while I try to sleep, or a month of Sadie basically hiding under the bed or in my room 90% of the time and only coming out to eat and go to the litter pan. It's not like they're going into heat or anything like that -- all three cats are fixed and have been since they were kittens. Sadie just wants to be a little cunt sometimes, and sometimes that stretches out into a month or so of her just being plain mean to Pete, but never to her sister Maggie. What's worse is that Pete is a pussy about it and puts up with it until she starts acting normally again, treading lightly, avoiding her, and running away instead of standing up to her and fighting back, which would make that shit stop really quick. Sadie likes to play the victim and be mean for no real reason. Being pissed off and growly at Pete for a few hours or for a full day is understandable. Being a total cunt for a month or more is not. Doing shit like keeping Pete from being able to come upstairs or go downstairs because she blocks the stairwell is not. Hiding under the bed and hissing/growling any time I go to bed and Pete comes down to sleep with me is not. I have no patience whatsoever for that shit. The only sort of funny thing about it is that whenever Sadie is being mean, Pete will be extra lovey and clingy with me, as if to say "protect me from that mean crazy bitch." Sometimes that's difficult, as Sadie rarely leaves my side.

Anyway.

My English 101 class today was fine. I have ten students total, as mentioned before. None of them are English majors, and (surprisingly) none of them are high schoolers. They're all either brand new freshmen or they're non-traditional returning students, and the gender ratio is about half and half. Also, to my great delight, all ten of them have experience writing in MLA format. All ten. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. It's a pretty balanced, small and intimate class, taught in the same classroom I taught my summer 102 in over a year ago. These students seem to be mostly quiet and looked a bit scared as well, though. I've invented a term for this perceived mentality: first semester shell shock. Many of the students I have in both of my semester-long classes are fresh out of high school, having never taken any college courses before. As such, they don't know what to expect, and on their first day in there they have a big burly guy reading to them very seriously and intently from a very strictly-and-officially-written syllabus about what the expectations of the course are -- I can certainly understand that they may be feeling a bit overwhelmed. That's why, at the end of the first class of the semester, I try to describe the sort of person I am without going into too much detail, but to ease their fears -- i.e., I'm a laid-back guy who teaches a pretty casual class, dresses casually, and thinks casually, and that I'm not there to be the English boogeyman, but to genuinely help them learn how to write better, and that I've been doing this a long time. One of my non-traditional
students, who is more than likely around my mother's age, was really nervous about the class until I assured her that I've taught it and other classes many times before, and that I'm a professor who's doing it because he wants to and not a grad student doing it simply because he has to. It has also been my experience that students who take classes on the West campus do it there because they have a particular mindset that doesn't necessarily mesh with the "herd them all into a room with a grad student" sort of classroom environment for one reason or another. The West students tend to be the overachievers, non-traditional, or part-time students, and also tend to be the ones who desperately want to do well. That means they actually put effort into their work, usually to great effect.  This group looks like it'll be a fun one simply because of that.

The rest of my week is pretty straightforward in both classes -- take attendance and give them their diagnostic exams, then leave when they're done. My 011 class will be given their first reading assignment today for over the weekend, and my 101 class will be assigned to purchase their workbook, as that's what we'll be going over on Tuesday. This weekend I'll grade the diagnostics and look over the sections I'll be covering for both classes, altogether an hour or two worth of teaching-oriented work I'll be doing while watching preseason football.

The rest of my weekend? Eh. Sleeping? Probably a lot, since my schedule is so messed up. After making my shopping trip in the overnight hours of Monday night, I don't have to go shopping anytime soon, and all of my bills are paid. I'll need gas in the car probably before I go to West campus tomorrow morning again, and I'll have to mail out the rent, but other than that I have nothing else that must be done aside from the aforementioned small amount of student stuff.

For now, though? I'm going to take a shower and see if I can conk out for a short few hours before getting up and facing another day on the main campus.