Hell Week

I just spent three hours in front of three remedial reading classes showing them the basics (the very basic basics) of library research. During the second class I already started to get lightheaded from talking in front of them. I don't know how real teachers can conduct 5-7 classes every single day. I try to rationalize my teaching wussitude by pointing out that I'm just a guest speaker. I never have a chance to get to know any of these students and I just do the same presentation over and over and over and over again. It's teacher assembly line work.

I had to get up at 5:30 this morning, half an hour earlier than usual, because I had an early class. I have another class this afternoon and another one tonight. The last one will end around 7:30 tonight, which means I won't get home until 8:30. I'll get home just in time to go right to bed and start the whole thing over again tomorrow.

This is the week when I do most of the remedial reading classes, which is what makes it "hell week" every semester. I have five classes today and another five tomorrow. We were supposed to have a new remedial reading coordinator this semester, and I was kinda hoping that the new one wouldn't keep the "library week" component of the class that the retiring one did for every single reading class the past five years. There's only one of me to go around, and yet every student on this campus who has a reading class gets my presentation. But the new coordinator they hired backed out of the job at the last minute, so the "library week" stayed as is.

I always forget every semester how much this completely exhausts me. I even changed my presentation so that it's almost all hands-on activities (worksheets and exercises) and yet I still get drained administering it. I can play tennis happily for three hours, and still be ready for more when I'm done, but put me in front of a class for that amount of time and I can barely function afterward. I wish I knew why this takes so much out of me.

"Hell Week" has an added bonus this year since the divorce will be final this week. (More on this later.) Next week my body's odometer turns over, and the week after that would have been our wedding anniversary. This exhaustion is putting me in a mood where I see a new, unhappy life stretched out before me: a divorced, lonely, needy loser getting older and less lovable with every library presentation.