...very very frightening, me.
Spring semester: day sixty-eight
I awoke this morning to heavy rain and thunderstorms just as I was getting out of bed. It's like they waited for me to wake up so that I could enjoy them. Most of it has moved off now, but it's nice and cool outside (I can feel the breeze through my windows), and I love driving in weather like this.
I do have to drive this morning, of course -- I have to teach my last real 102 morning class. Next week they take their practice exam, turn in their last paper, and take their final...and once their final is done a week from today, the class is over.
Everything's coming up so quickly. Daisy signed the lease to the new place yesterday (I thought she was signing it on the 1st, but apparently not) and paid May's rent and the pet deposit for the cats. She will begin moving her stuff in there during the first week of the month. She also set up the electric service to be turned on as well as the water and trash pickup. I, in the meantime, will get paid tomorrow and will be sending out my own rent check with the 30 days' notice letter this weekend, as you know. There's a lot to do in the course of the next month or so, and I have to be able to keep myself from going crazy (or running out of money) while I do it.
My final 210 class last night was rather subdued, to be honest with you. My students did their presentations and defended their projects, and all of them did quite well. Many of them used handouts, one of them used PowerPoint and YouTube, two of them brought in cookies and snacks for everyone, and overall it was fun -- but it was also very low-key. I got the sense that most of these students were at least a little sad that the class was ending, as throughout the semester I'd definitely gotten the vibe from them that my class was by far the most interesting or otherwise fun class they were taking. Most of the department's instructors hate teaching 210 because they find it boring; I love it because it's easy to teach and the assignments are fun and interesting, and unlike some other classes I've taught, the 210 assignments tend to be actually useful and applicable to the students' lives.
At the end of the class, I gave a shortened version of my standard end-of-the-semester speech, which is basically me thanking the students for allowing me the privilege of teaching them for the semester, saying I hoped they had fun, saying that this may be the last 210 class (or even type of class) that I'll ever teach, and that it was a pleasure to have them, etc. Then I dismissed, and everyone dispersed.
It's always sad on some level for me to end a class; it doesn't matter how inconvenient it was for me or how much I loved/hated teaching it. I always make a connection with and association with some of my students, and as sappy as it may sound, I do make memories in my classes every semester -- memories I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. This was a good group of students; they came to class on time every week (I only had three absences total the entire semester long), they did their work, they asked questions when they had them, didn't pick fights with me (or one another) and didn't talk or sleep during class, and all of them were smart and mature. It's also the only class I've taught in recent memory where nobody has failed for any reason. I'm proud of and impressed with those students. Perhaps that's why, to me, that class ending is somewhat bittersweet.
I've put all of their final grades on Blackboard but haven't yet rolled them in the official Banner system. It doesn't matter anyway; grades on Banner can be put on there at any time, but they're not officially written to record until something like May 21st, after everything is officially done and over with for the semester. That changed last fall; it used to be that they'd be "rolled" at the end of day processes on whatever date they were entered, and if they needed to be changed after that, you had to do a paper "change of grade" form with the department and the registrar. I had to do like, three of those last spring for people who didn't show up for the final and ended up having to take their exams late.
Anyway.
Once class was done last night -- meaning that now, on Wednesdays, I never have to leave the house if I don't want to, and will save a day's worth of gas every week -- I drove home. Thunderstorms were rolling in from the west; because this is Kansas and everything is so goddamned flat, you can actually see the storms from probably twenty or thirty miles away if you're in an open area with no buildings or trees around...such as the interstate between here and campus. I watched them roll in out of the corner of my eye as I took the interstate back home, and by the time I got to Newton the lightning was getting closer. I couldn't help it, though; I still had to stop at Walmart and do my weekly shopping, since I'd skipped out on it on Tuesday night and thus was either almost out or completely out of many essentials around the house.
When I got to Walmart, it was actually somewhat busy (for it being, y'know, 10PM on a Wednesday). I followed my list and got everything on it I needed, wincing at the prices on some of it, but getting it anyway -- higher-end items like cleaning supplies, bleach, duct tape for packing, extra cat food and litter -- and was in and out of the store in about half an hour. When I left, the store was deserted and cleared out almost completely; it was weird. By the time I got home and got everything brought into the house, it was beginning to thunder a bit. It rained for maybe fifteen minutes, and there was a little pretty lightning and mild thunder, but no hail or anything like that. The storm we got this morning upon my awakening was much stronger.
After I messaged Daisy to tell her I was home safely, I ate and went to bed, got up, and here I am now -- dressed in shorts, sandals, and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt -- ready to drive south to teach my students this morning how to take their final exam next week. Daisy got home and went to bed this morning around the same time I got up, so I didn't get to talk to her (and probably won't be able to until tonight), even though my class today will probably be somewhat short and I'll more than likely be home by 10:30 or a little after at the latest. That's less than three hours from now. My Thursday consists of three hours of work, of which roughly an hour will be spent driving back and forth.
Despite this, I have a soul-crushingly busy weekend ahead of me. While I no longer have any work to do for my 210s, I have a stack of papers to grade for my 011s and a stack of journals for the 102s I'll teach this morning. I will also be finishing up the cleaning of the garage, though I may wait until Sunday for that -- it's supposed to be 92 degrees on Saturday, and Saturday evening/night we're supposed to get some nasty storms, so I may have to put the car in the garage (which, of course, would stop me from being able to effectively sweep out said garage). I need to fully gut the rest of my closets and begin marking/pricing larger items for the yard sale next weekend, and if it's nice enough, with all of this rain we've gotten in the past 24 hours or so, I should probably mow the grass. I also want to use the rest of the boxes I have now to pack whatever I can in them so that I can clear out that space in the garage, and will more than likely go get more this weekend as well, probably in the middle of the night from Walmart. It's very evident at this point that I'll need a lot more than I currently have.
So, yes, it'll be another long, work-filled weekend, and to start it, I'll probably come home and crash early this afternoon so that I can recoup some of the rest I sorely need. While I'm relatively awake this morning, I'm also sure that by the time I get home and eat/decompress a bit, I'll be tired again. I didn't want to get up this morning when my alarm went off -- for once, I was in a deep sleep and the alarm scared me when it went off instead of me waking up a few minutes beforehand and expecting it.
On that note? Off I go to class.
No comments:
Post a Comment