Winter Wonderland

Fall semester: day seventy-nine

I'm not normally awake at 3AM on a Wednesday night, but as I went to bed at 4:30 PM or so yesterday afternoon, I awoke shortly after midnight with eight hours of well-rested sleep, and I'm up. Usually I would try to go back to sleep and sleep until my alarm went off, but eh. Today's the last day of classes, and all I have to do is give my 101 students their final exam and come home. I'll be out of the house for less than four hours today, so if I'm tired when I come back home I can pass out and not have to worry about it -- it'll be the first Thursday since October where I've not had to spend over 12 hours on the West campus. It's the last Thursday until late January that I'll have to be on any campus. Everything seems to be wrapping up nicely; as I've written here before, I always expect the semesters to end with a bang, not a whimper, but for the most part these days they end quietly and without incident. This one has been no real exception thus far. I'm still waiting on a few assignments from a few folks via email, but overall the vast majority of my students' work has been finished and I'm looking forward to a long weekend of getting some quality downtime and sleep.

However, the weather doesn't really want to cooperate with me. On Tuesday, as I mentioned, the temperature was 65 degrees in the afternoon and it felt like summer outside. It was sunny and warm, and I didn't even have to wear a jacket in the afternoon on West campus. By that evening, it was 45. By yesterday morning when I got up, it was 37 with fog. By the time I got to campus, it was 33. By the time I finished teaching my last 011 class of the semester, it was 27 and windy. By the time I pulled into my driveway at 1:30 or so, after stopping at Walmart for some essentials and groceries, it was snowing. The temperature had dropped by forty degrees and it had gone from sunny and warm to bitterly cold and snowing in less than twenty-four hours. 

Again, welcome to Kansas, folks.

I guess in the evening hours, some snow and sleet rolled through; there's a dusting of snow on the driveway and on the road, but none of it's sticking since the ground isn't completely frozen because it was so warm two days ago. I would imagine there will be some slick spots here and there for my drive down to West campus in a few hours, but it's not still snowing or doing anything outside. It's just really cold and windy. My part of Kansas is between the two big storm systems rolling through the midwest right now -- there's a bigger one south and east of me, and another north and west of me. The latter will give Daisy and her family some snow up in Omaha, from what she told me yesterday afternoon. For me, though, it's just supposed to be really cold from now through finals week, which doesn't bode well for my electric bill for December. This house gets really cold, and I have all-electric heat. I can huddle under blankets and wear as many layers as I want, but I have to keep the furnace running at least sporadically or the pipes will freeze when it gets cold enough. Kansas winters tend to suck not so much because of the snow, but because of the sheer cold.

My mother told me yesterday that she was readying my "birthday box," which she tries to do every year -- she sends me a big box filled with foods and small presents from home, like a care package of sorts. She wanted to know what I wanted her to put in it this year. I told her, point-blank, "money," and told her I didn't need anything. I don't need gift cards or candies or foods; if she wanted to do something for me she could take the money she would spend filling and shipping the box to me (usually a considerable sum) and drop it into my bank account so I can pay my bills between semesters. I don't have any savings anymore -- that cash has disappeared. I won't get paid again after my birthday until who knows when, because I don't know when the spring semester's paychecks will start and I don't know how many classes I'll get, which will affect the amount of those checks. I'll have to be able to survive between now and at least late January (conservative estimate) on the paychecks I'll receive tomorrow and on my birthday, and that is going to be very hard as it is. At the very least, I'll go a full month without pay, and it's not like my bills just stop rolling in because the semester goes on break over the holidays.

I used to be able to have some reliable sources of "Christmas and birthday money," where several people (mostly extended family) would send me checks or cash in a card since my birthday is right before Christmas, but that doesn't really happen anymore now that I'm, y'know, in my thirties. I, like most other people my age, am on my own at this point. I should be able to scrape by, but I would imagine that it will be very slim pickings for grocery shopping and the like for the next month or so, and most of it will have to be charged on my credit cards. I can't really avoid that; if I had another source of income it wouldn't be a problem, but I don't. And it's a temporary issue anyhow.

Oh well. I'll just have to do what I can. At least the loans people are now processing my forbearance request, and I should hear back from them in a few days at the most.

This weekend will be one of wearing layers and finishing up the last of what's left before Monday; I'll be trying to sleep as much as possible and rest myself to prepare for the final exam day. I'll be in there on campus early on Monday; the Director is my grading partner for the 101 exams I'll give this morning, and I want to be able to finish those up and post grades for them ASAP if at all possible. I also always help to decorate the Writing Center for our department in-house party at the end of the semester, known as the "Finals Feast."

I've probably written about the Finals Feast here before, but if I haven't I'll cover it briefly: on the first day of finals week, the entire English department gives their exams for all of the composition courses (011, 013, 015, 100, 101, 102) and therefore, all of us are there. Everyone who teaches one of those courses gives exams that day at the same time, from 1-2:50 PM. At noon, all of us gather in the Writing Center for what they call the Finals Feast -- thirty or so pizzas are trucked in by Pizza Hut's catering division (no, that's not an exaggeration), and all of us eat. Most of us bring side dishes or desserts as well (this year I'm bringing two big boxes of cordial cherries, and in the spring I made two large tubs of vegan Oreo pudding). It's a way for all of us as GTAs, professors, and administrators to be able to loosen up a bit and have a nice little bonding luncheon at the end of the semester as we wrap up all of our work. In the fall semester, it's even more fun, because generally there are Christmas-themed treats and side-dishes people bring in. I always get there early to help the Writing Center director put up all of the Christmas decorations as well, and it's a fun experience. Whatever's left after the feast ends is taken back to the main office's copy room, and is generally distributed amongst anyone who wants to take it home, as if nobody does it's just thrown away. There are usually four or five whole pizzas left over, and this year (since I'm basically broke) I'll probably take a large amount of that if nobody wants it, as it would prevent me from needing to go grocery shopping for a good week or so. We do have a larger department this year than we did before, so I'll have to see what happens.

The finals feast is also a good opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues I haven't seen over the course of most of the semester, since I'm only on the main campus two mornings a week for about three hours at a time. Most of my friends who are still here are rarely around when I am, and I've barely even met 90% of the new GTAs who came in this fall because, well, it's not like I have classes with them or hang around the department as much as I used to. Now that I'm a professor, I'm in and out, and am only there when I need to be or have to be.

Despite the fact that it means I'll be poor after my birthday, I am indeed looking forward to the semester's end. While I do love teaching, and while my classes this semester were good for the most part, I look forward to being able to sleep my own hours and keep my own schedule. I won't be visiting my parents this Christmas, though I will be visiting Daisy's, and most of the time I'm off will be, for once, genuine downtime. I haven't had genuine downtime since August. It's not like I can do much with it since I don't have any money, but I'll remind you that I have the first three seasons of Breaking Bad I haven't touched yet, as well as the stack of Black Friday movies I got at Walmart last week. As an aside, during my trip to Walmart yesterday, they still had all of the leftover Black Friday movies in bins for the same price here. It was all the same stuff they had at the Walmart in York, but I found that interesting at the very least. I didn't get anything new -- again, it's not like I have the money or time for it anyway.

On that note, I'm going to get a shower and begin getting ready for my day. I don't have to leave the house for several more hours, no, but I have some stuff to take care of in the meantime.