Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Distractions that refuse to end...

The weeks of summer are quickly dissipating, and in a few minutes, it seems, my son will be in kindergarten, and I will be standing in front of classes full of terrified college freshmen, and arrogant college juniors. Hey-a great deal of life experience is gained in those three years!
At this point, with classes starting in 12 days, I have my online classes uploaded into the system, my parking permits, my ID's, syllabi completed and all of the needed tidbits for every day campus life. I even just recently realized that I have an overload for the semester, which pads my weekly income considerably! At this point, it seems that I am on track, and you are probably wondering what the issue is....
I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FLIP I'M TEACHING!!
Granted, some of this is my own fault. With my stand up lecture for epi & stats, I have all of the material, and have been lacking in putting it all together. I have the first five weeks of lectures set, but I have yet to write any exams, or anything past the fifth week. When I sit down to work, it seems that the smallest little thing can grab my attention, like a shiny object from across the room. I find myself writing two or three slides an hour, watching a show, shifting my position on the couch, and checking Facebook a couple hundred times. My ass begins to hurt from inactivity, so in an attempt to retain functional use of my muscular structures, I begin a manic cleaning tantrum around the house. While I must say that my house has never been cleaner, I am reminded by my goal, that my anatomy lectures need a second glance....
Yet even with all of these self inflicted, last minute concerns, I can't help but feel mildly irritated. As stated before, I have 12 days before my semester begins, and I have yet to see the manual for one of the labs I'm teaching in the fall. The person in charge of this class says that the manual will be posted the Monday before class begins, which gives me exactly one week to look at the manual to figure out what I'm teaching for the semester. For many of you, this may seem like an ample amount of time, but I'm not one of them. Thinking about the amount of time that has passed between when I took this class as a college student, to the current time when I will begin teaching it, I am reminded of the fact that as I age, so does my brain. My attention span seems to be aging as well. With these factors in mind, an old woman needs some time to re-learn the material. 
With that said, many of you may have guessed that I'm currently writing this while I should be writing lectures. I suppose....back to the grind...

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