Making Life Easier

Throughout my life, at least throughout my working life, my scheduled has bounced back and forth between nothing to everything. It's the nature of the beast: When the semester is in session, the grading seems endless. When school's out, I don't have much to do. That's not entirely accurate, I suppose, since I always have other work, paid and volunteer. This semester is the first time I've ever taught three classes of different lengths -- not in terms of each meeting, but in duration for the semester. I am doing a sixteen-week course, a twelve-week course, and an eight-week course. Keeping it all straight in my head has become very confusing. I had to buy a new little notebook to keep track of what I have to do for each class. I already have two notebooks -- one for each campus -- where I write my lesson plans and assignments for each day, checking them off as I complete them or, alternately, drawing arrows to other days for work I didn't get to with the students.

With two classes, I could keep it all straight. This new class pushed me over the edge -- in terms of knowing what I have to do. The little things like printing out assignments, or posting them on our academic tool; making arrangements for observations by two different deans on two different campuses; choosing readings; and coming up with prompts. So I bought the little notebook, but I haven't actually written anything in it yet. That's one more thing I need to remember to do. If you look at my calendar, it's a big mess of overlapping tasks and appointments. It's crazy.

I decided today that I couldn't do everything I had scheduled. As much as I enjoy taking sewing lessons, it takes time away from other things I could be doing, such as grading, planning, or just relaxing for a few minutes. I had already missed last week, and I contacted my instructor earlier today and told her that I wasn't going to complete the class. Now that I've accumulated so much material and many notions, I want to continue to sew, whether on my own or with her guidance, or both. My new plan is to do what I can with some simple projects and return to classes in January. Just knowing I have one less place to go and one less thing to do has made me feel lighter and relieved. It's a shame that the only thing I can really opt out of is my "me-time", but I'll get back to it. One more month of this insanity and I'll swing back to the other end of the pendulum: nothing to do. At least by then it will be coming up on Christmastime, and my youngest son will be home for a few weeks with the others being here -- hopefully all at the same time -- at some point during the month. After that, who knows? I haven't been assigned any classes yet, so I may have to get used to too much downtime again.