The Joy of Teaching

At the beginning of January I was madly apprehensive about the start of term, because I was wandering into what I thought was terra incognita. It was only when things got rolling that I realized that, not only have I in fact done all this before, but I've been doing it longer than a lot of my colleagues in the degree who I generally think of as Smarter Than Me (and also More Adult Than Me, and Better Equipped to Handle Life than me). It's been nearly a decade since I gave my first lecture, and a little over half that time since I started working in the Writing Lab.

This isn't the first time that I've completely forgotten that I do in fact have this type of experience - the only explanation I can think of is that the trauma of it all has scrubbed the memory from my brain, to be recalled only when it's too late for the flight response to be effectively triggered.

Seminars are both more and less difficult than I anticipated them being. I have to know the material more thoroughly than I would if I were lecturing on it, and there is no comfortable performative groove to get into during the session, since everything's responsive. And no matter how well I prepare, if the students have prepared as well to the degree that they're meant to, one of them will come up with an argument or a challenge that I haven't though of, and while that makes me happy like nothing else, it also leaves me a bit stumped as to how to respond. The alternative, unfortunately, is that they don't prepare to the degree that they're meant to, the seminar never quite makes it to the level I'm aiming for, and I bounce my face against the office wall in utter frustration afterwards.

The one thing I absolutely didn't expect is just how exhausting teaching is. Wednesday mornings are an utter write-off because it takes me until nearly 10 to be able to scrape my carcass off the mattress. And the relief of being finished on Tuesday night has approximately a twelve hour half-life.

I already go far over the hours that I'm supposed to spend each week on prepping and reading over student work - we all do, it seems - but I wish that I had more time to put into the Creative Writing class. Another hour or two a week, the files I left in the States... maybe one day I'll be able to pull off the class I wish I had the time to design. Hopefully at that point I will have learned to read a room better so I won't be eternally on edge and worried that they're going to toss me out the window and set up their own Lord of the Flies type empire.

The first assessed submissions are due in two weeks, and are theoretically being worked on even now - so even though it feels like at the moment I have absolutely no time or brain for my own work, that should be getting worse in a little bit. On the bright side, we're halfway to Easter Break, and I've learned more critical theory than I thought possible.