I start teaching at the…

I start teaching at the U today. David asked yesterday if I was excited, and I said that I wasn't, particularly. Well, given that last night I woke up every damn hour, convinced that it was 5:30 a.m. and time for me to get up, I suppose I'm at least a little excited. But I think my students would have been better served by my managing to sleep through the night. You'd think my brain/body could have figured that one out on its own, but no...

I wasn't feeling very well around dinnertime last night, so I ended up not going to writer's group (I also had very little to say about the two stories we were critting; I thought they were pretty close to done). I napped for a while, felt better, and then turned on music and worked like a fiend. I'm not sure what I did exactly; it's all a bit of a blur. I think I churned through some CS e-mail, making decisions about our fund drive and press packet. I know I did simultaneous submissions of "Esthely Blue" to Ploughshares and The Boston Review (the only lit markets that accept simul subs, as far as I can tell). I sorted my paperwork a little. Somehow all of this took three hours; don't ask me how. I have a feeling somebody slipped a timeslip in there.

The really exciting thing is that I finished what I hope will be the last revision of "Minal in Winter". I followed Marcia's advice, and rewrote the scene that had been in the aunt's (Raji's) point of view; now it's part of the following scene, and all in third person. I'm not sure it entirely works; I'll send it out to a few people for feedback today, and perhaps I'll need to tweak it more. But given that I have done very little real writing in months (some edits of "Challah", but that's about it), this was very happy-making for me.

Now tea, shower, pack my bag and go. Students. 92 of them. Meep!

(Actually, I'm pretty sure it'll be fine.)


2:21. It was fine. :-)

More specifically, while I was a little nervous at the beginning of my first three classes (by the fourth time giving the same little lecture, I wasn't nervous anymore!), I didn't make any major flubs, and generally think I covered everything I was supposed to. Of course, it would have been hard not to, since all I was doing today was introducing myself and the course, and then having them do a 20-minute in-class writing, so I could familiarize myself with their writing. I'm halfway through reading those now; should be done by 3-ish.

It wasn't too tiring, though it's a good thing I have two breaks in there. And I think I should try hard to get eight hours sleep the nights before I teach -- while I certainly won't fall asleep on them, being exhausted does make it harder to be bright and peppy (which is my general teaching style; cheerful, enthusiastic, occasionally wryly humorous (I got some chuckles out of each class, though you never know if they're laughing with you or at you...)).

Gonna go finish reviewing those essays, and then I think I'll head home. Will probably take it easy tonight; pick up some groceries, cook some curry. (Roshani, like me, likes pancakes and curry for breakfast. But that means you need to have leftover curry... :-)

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *