Thanksgiving break: day one
Last night's 210 class was a blast.
I mentioned that, because I'm a nice guy and because their last project is so extensive, at the beginning of the 210 class when I created the lesson plan timeline for my students, I worked in that the last day of class before Thanksgiving break could be a "potluck dinner" night in which all of us could bring something in and we could all share in the good food as our own miniature "Thanksgiving" in class as we discussed the last assignment, the Oral Presentation.
I also mentioned that over the past two weeks or so, I brought this up in class to quite the lukewarm reception. Lots of "ehs" and "umms," hemming and hawwing, and a general less-than-enthusiastic vibe settled across the classroom, especially as many of them were getting really stressed out and burnt-out as the semester began to draw to a close (including their professor).
I brought it up in class again on Tuesday night and tried to make it fun -- who's bringing what; it's not required, just for fun, etc. They seemed a bit more open to it then. I had several students volunteer to cook different things, bake different things, bring in drinks, etc. A plan was coming together. I was thrilled.
I was not as thrilled then, however, as I was once things started coming in last night.
Of course, I was there first -- I always am -- and I'd purchased four different types of chewy granola bars (big boxes, too), and had brought in some plates/cups/towels so that we wouldn't be without. On the whiteboard, I wrote in large letters "Eat. Grow large with food." That's a Simpsons quote, by the way, in case you didn't know.
I should also mention that, as expected, it was fucking freezing last night, with constant 30-40mph winds and mist in the afternoon that froze on the cars once the temperature dropped enough and the wind had its way with it. The weather had predicted that mist turn over to ice and sleet and then snow by the evening hours. I had sent out an email to my 210 class that told them yes, class would go on as scheduled, so that I could avoid receiving twenty different "are we still having class?" emails. The ice/sleet/snow never came (not even now) but it was 52 when I got to West campus yesterday morning around 8:30, and by 6:30 that night it was 25. With that howling, horrible wind. It was still 25 for most of the day here; the warmest it's been today thus far has been 28.
But I'm getting off-track.
I didn't expect a lot of the students to show up due to the weather issues and because their big final projects were due -- I expected excuses and whining and general laziness from even the ones who said they planned to bring something to eat -- and I thought for the first part of class, I was right. At 7:15, the time class started, we had seven students out of twenty there.
However, six of those seven students had brought an enormous amount of food.
We had the pizzas that one of my students promised he'd bring. We had chicken crescent roll casserole. We had a massive crock pot full of cheese dip and two bags of nacho chips. Three 12-packs of soda. Two bags of potato chips. A massive container of brownies. A chocolate cake made with avocados instead of eggs (it was amaaaazing). A huge dish full of cookies. And, of course, my granola bars -- which seemed strangely out of place amongst all of the goodies.
And nobody was filling plates. Everyone was staring down at their desks.
"Well, come on folks," I said. "Come on up, fill your plates, get something to eat. Don't make me sit up here like a fatass and eat in front of you. Because, translation, I will sit up here like a fatass and eat in front of you."
Mind you, when I teach my days on West campus, I don't eat anything all day. I get there at 8:30 in the morning, and sometimes don't leave until 9:30 at night or later. I have a ritual of getting two cups of coffee from the machine in the lobby, each with three creamers and two sugars, and that's it. So, believe me, by the time my night class rolled around, I was hungry. As I don't normally eat until I get home (around 10 or so), this was as much a meal for me as anything was.
I think everyone was just shy. Once one or two people started getting up to get some food, all of them sort of formed a line and began making plates. Once everyone had their food and had settled down, I went over the Oral Presentation assignment -- as by that time it was around 7:40 and everyone who was coming to class was already there.
"The oral presentations start as soon as we get back from break," I said. "We sort of hit the ground running here. Now, here's how we can make it work, if everyone is game: there are 20 of you in this class. Of you 20, only about...eh, eighteen or so show up. Our class is scheduled to run from 7:20 to 10. Averaging about ten minutes per presentation, if we started at 7:20 exactly, we could get through sixteen of them. Now, there is another class in this room before this class--"
I, at this point, motioned to one of my good students who is in said class before mine.
"[Student] here is in that class. What time do they generally get out?"
"It really depends," he said, "but a lot of the time we get out waaaaaay early."
This is also true; that class is supposed to run until 7:15, but I've been in my room to set stuff up at shortly after 6 before, and it's been long empty before then.
"So here's what we can do. We can't stay late -- this class is the last class of the night in the building, and it's also the one that ends the latest. As soon as 10PM rolls around, the office staff shuts everything down and lock up for the night, and they won't want to stay late. At all. We'd be holding them up. So, here's the alternative... How many of you can get here before this class normally begins at 7:20?"
A good 80% of my students in the room raised their hands.
"Yesssss. Excellent. So here's the deal. [Student] will come get me when that class lets out that night, and I'll be in here from then on. Could be 6, could be 6:30, whatever -- it doesn't matter, really. Come when you can. If you can get here early, go for it; if you can't get here until we'd normally start at 7:20, that's fine too -- it's not like we won't be here. When you people start showing up, we'll start knocking these presentations out, one by one, until we be done. If we do that? We get them all taken care of in one night and then none of us have to come back in on that Thursday night. Our class ends as soon as the last presentation ends. Thoughts? Questions? Can we do this?"
Everyone nodded and yessed at me, and were quite happy.
"Here's the caveat to that, though," I added. "Do not miss class that night. Do not. If you don't show up, and everyone else but you does their presentations, class is still over -- too bad for you. I'm not staying here all day/night on that Thursday when I don't have to, and I'm not bringing everyone else back in here that Thursday night for one or two presentations, especially when for them, class is already over and all of their grades have been calculated and posted. If you miss class that night? You'll have to come find me during my office hours on main campus on Wednesday morning or after I give my 101 students their final exam over here on that Thursday morning if you want your points. No exceptions. It's totally on you if you miss this. So show up that Tuesday night and be 'ready to go,' as they say."
They understood.
On that Thursday morning, December 5, it's the last day of classes for the fall semester. From 9:15 to 11:05 AM, I'll be administering the final exam to my West campus English 101 students, because I can do that when I teach classes on the West campus. I plan to stick around for at least a little while afterwards, not just to grade those exams myself, but to give any of those wayward students the opportunity to come to my office before I go back home for the weekend. If I don't have any of those wayward students, then once I give the exam and my 101 faithfuls all finish it, I'll just drive home and grade them there in my leisure. Everything else, at that point, will have been graded and returned to the rest of my classes, and the exams will be all that's left. On the Monday afternoon of the 9th, my 011 students will take their own final exam, I'll trade all of my exams with my grading partner afterwards, get them back and do whatever paperwork is necessary -- and, hopefully, by that night I will be completely done with the fall semester once all of my grades are entered onto Banner. I'll never beat my record time of being done by 4:30PM on the first day of finals week, but I'll more than likely be damn close to it, thanks to the fact that I will have already graded my 101 class's exams.
In other news? I have a sinus infection.
It is not pleasant.
Generally, I get a sinus infection about once or twice a year. Sometimes they're mild, sometimes they're terrible. This one, so far, is pretty in-between. On Tuesday morning, I woke up with sinus pressure and congestion. This isn't unusual, given my propensity for allergies this time of year. Pressure and congestion is manageable; some Sudafed and blowing my nose multiple times generally knocks most of it out, and I can go about my day. By Wednesday afternoon, my face was beginning to mildly ache, and my teeth were sensitive (as when I get a sinus infection, it's always in those sinuses, right in the middle of my face) on my left side. When I get that familiar ache and teeth sensitivity -- both upper and lower teeth -- that's the telltale sign that I'm getting a sinus infection of some sort. I took sinus/pain pills and the aches and pain went away for the most part, and I went about my day normally.
By yesterday morning it was much worse. The entire left side of my face/teeth/jaw hurt, and I knew it was a sinus infection at that point. My nose was not congested, and my allergies had decided to abandon me for a day or so -- it was all up in my face and above my teeth, and it was terrible. The pressure in my face was throbbing; if I sat still in a quiet room I could hear, and feel, the individual throbs along with my heartbeat, feel every nerve in my teeth and jaw jangling as the sinus pressure pressed against all my teeth and the floor of my sinuses. My nasal passages were clear -- nothing would come out but air if I blew my nose, because believe me, I tried. I took more sinus/pain pills and followed them up an hour later, before I left the house for the day, with Tylenol -- in an attempt to be able to function normally while I was stuck on West campus all day. However, like an idiot -- even though I meant to -- I completely forgot to take more sinus/pain pills with me to school.
I taught my 101 class that morning and I was fine; I figured that hopefully, what I'd taken would knock it out, or at least begin to send it packing. When I sat in my office yesterday afternoon, in the quiet, and tried to grade through papers and journals, the pain slowly came back, increasing in intensity until it was nearly unbearable and I couldn't concentrate on anything but how much it hurt. I composed myself and went to the main office, asking if they had any Tylenol or Advil or any sort of pain pills in the stockroom down there, as it was either that or drive to the gas station across the street in extreme facial pain to get something to stop the hurting. The administrator lady there gave me Advil, which I happily took two of. About an hour later, the pain lessened and lessened and finally went away, and I could fully concentrate again and finish my grading.
By the time that evening class rolled around and we had our potluck feast, the Advil was wearing off. My face was beginning to ache again, but it wasn't bad. I left campus around 9PM once we'd cleaned up everything in the room and had distributed everything left behind by the students who'd brought stuff in but didn't want to take it home. By the time I got home around 10, the pain/pressure was full-blown once more and had engulfed the entire left side of my face/jaws/teeth again. The first thing I did was take more sinus and pain pills -- I wanted the pain to end. I don't care about the pressure; when it doesn't hurt, I can't feel it, and my nasal passages were/are clear, but the pain is simply unbearable. It was the worst it had been yet, and nothing I did would make it go away. I waited, nerves jangling horrifically, my face muscles spasming and twitching because it hurt so much, and I held my hand to my face and softly sobbed, rocking back and forth on the couch, begging aloud for the medicine to just kick in so that it would stop. An hour later, nothing was different. I didn't know why the pills weren't working. I took another Tylenol and waited some more. By midnight, nothing had really changed, and I took two aspirin. Something had to work.
For those of you who never get sinus infections, it is not the worst pain imaginable, but it is pretty bad if it gets infected in the right spot -- usually the maxillary sinus right above the top row of teeth -- and it really feels like your face is going to explode from the inside out.
You won't always feel the pressure -- but you will feel the pain. It will radiate through your teeth, across your facial bones back towards your ear, down the jaw...every nerve will jangle and shake and hurt like someone is punching you in the cheek with brass knuckles over and over and over again with every single throb. Your teeth and jaw will tremble from the pain unless you physically hold them still. Your facial bones, though they are hard and...well, bony, are still flexible -- if you feel them with your fingers on both cheeks above your tooth line, you can feel that the infected side is slightly bulged outward more under the skin due to the sinus pressure and mucus.
And the worst part is...you can't do anything about it.
I have had some truly horrific sinus infections in the past, mind you. Some of them have been so bad that the pressure and terrible pain comes in waves -- waves of pain and pressure so severe that I've punched myself in the face repeatedly just trying to get some of it to dislodge and drain, because punching myself in the face hurts less. The pain is so bad that I've resorted to screaming at times, usually into a pillow (so that the neighbors don't think I'm murdering someone and call the cops) because there's just no other way to deal with it. I once had a sinus infection so bad that the only way I could get any of the pressurized mucus to dislodge and drain was by crying, a lot, loudly and forcefully, at the pain -- doing so was the only thing that would open up my nasal passages ever so slightly, and that was my chance to blow my nose as many times as I could, as hard as I could, to drain anything/everything that would come out. When I did, I could feel the pressure release -- it felt like, and sounded like inside my head -- someone opening a bottle of soda: the pshhhhhhh of carbonation escaping, pressures equalizing and normalizing for that moment. After I could blow out everything that came out, I felt fine for about forty minutes or so, and then slowly, slowly, the pressure and pain would come back as my sinuses once more filled with mucus that I didn't even know my body was capable of producing, and I'd have to repeat the cycle. This went on for many hours until I was so exhausted that I took a Lortab (yeah, back when I had those) to kill as much of the pain as possible, and went to sleep while I physically could.
Yeah. Sometimes they get really bad.
Last night, the pain finally, finally started to subside around 1AM -- almost four hours after I took the first sinus/pain pills -- and I slowly started to feel a bit more normal again. However, I didn't know how long I'd feel okay. Daisy was asleep; she'd been asleep for hours, and I was indeed exhausted -- I'd been on campus all day and night, and yet I couldn't sleep because I had been in so much pain I could barely function. It was nothing compared to what I described above, but still, it was not fun. By 2 or so, the pain had gone away completely, and I felt fine again -- but I didn't trust it. I went downstairs and ran some laundry, as that's one of the big tasks I had to do before I finish readying the house for my trip to Omaha next week, and fuck it, I was awake anyhow, so I might as well use my time wisely, right?
By 3 I was really, really tired. I couldn't stay awake anymore and the pain was mostly gone. Daisy woke up (again, she sleeps weird hours when she's not at work) and I talked to her briefly before I went to bed. As I was readying for bed, I felt it slowly beginning to come back -- that ache in my teeth was there again, but dull. I took another set of sinus/pain pills (which ended up being my last ones), since it had been six hours since I took the others, and hoped that it would get me through the night and allow me to sleep. I also hoped/begged/prayed/etc. that in the night, as I slept, all of it would drain and I would feel normal again this morning.
That was not the case.
At 7:10 AM, the sinus pressure and pain was so bad that it woke me out of a dead sleep. I staggered upstairs and took two Sudafed and three aspirin, as I had exhausted my supply of sinus/pain pills a mere four hours before. I went back downstairs and was able to fall back asleep after the aspirin slowly made the pain fade away into nothingness. I got up again, finally, at 11:45 with no pain or ill effects, and I was able to blow my nose to begin dislodging whatever had drained into my nasal passages during my sleep. This was short-lived. By 12:30 the aching/pain/pressure was slowly returning, and even though I'd caught it and realized it was happening, plying myself with more medicine, it again came back full-force and I had trouble functioning and concentrating. Daisy got to see this as I steadily got worse and worse while we were talking on Skype this afternoon. I told her I was fine, just in a lot of pain, and attempted to keep the conversation going with her as long as I could. It took another 90 minutes after taking the medications before I started to feel better at all, and even that was only moderately better -- by around 5PM it was rolling back around again, in its next wave, as the medicine completely wore off. She suggested I get a hot shower to see if it would make me feel better, and I did so. It did make me feel better after holding my face under the hottest water I could stand and then repeatedly blowing my nose in the shower over and over. The steam helped. The hot water helped. But not for long.
The entire past two days now have been these repeating cycles: medicine kicks in, feel a little better, feel normal for two or three hours, medicine wears off slowly, pain comes back slowly, take more medicine, pain hits full-throttle until medicine kicks in again, repeat. It's like clockwork. The only thing that allows me to feel normal, and only for a short few hours at a time, is being heavily medicated on decongestants, aspirin, Tylenol, and Mucinex Sinus. All together, usually.
Physically, I'm fine from the neck down.
From the neck up? I've had to stop-and-start this post no less than three times tonight because of those full-throttle pain cycles. They've now gotten so bad that nothing I do seems to stop the pain or even lessen it -- I can't take any more aspirin or Tylenol tonight or I'll risk overdose, yet what I've taken has done absolutely nothing. Same goes for decongestants and the like; I can't take any more of them, yet the ones I have taken aren't seeming to help clear out what's in there now. What's worse is that the meds I have taken may actually be working, and when they completely wear off, my pain may shoot off the charts into the screaming in agony category again and there's absolutely nothing I can do about that. Nothing. I am so exhausted, totally so, but I am -- right now -- currently in so much pain that I would never, ever be able to fall asleep. That's how terrible it is.
Perhaps this may not be a "mild" sinus infection as I originally thought, but one of the really, really bad ones, as it has seemed to get worse and worse as the days this week have progressed forward. As I have been writing this tonight, it seems to be trying to move onward and spread into my ears, which would be really bad, even more painful, and would absolutely need antibiotics to fix. Daisy has a run of Bactrim she got specifically for this sort of thing popping up (in either me or her) but she won't be here for a few more days, and it's too short of a timeframe to mail it.
I will, of course, keep you updated on how I feel.
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