Alive, busy, happy

I'm alive, very busy (not excessively so, thankfully! Leisure time guaranteed), and happy.

I was angsty before the semester started, for several reasons, but now I feel quite at peace, which is great. We're much more organized this year, my husband is helping with making a meal plan for the week and we're spending less and eating better!

OK, I'm about to drive 80 miles in pouring rain, so hopefully I'll continue to be fine. I always think about my probability of being in an accident, but there's nothing I can do. It's how I operate, it doesn't make me less happy. ;-)

I added so many labels to this tiny post, it's quite funny! I hope to blog again soon.

You'll never guess...

... how I spent this day, the "happiest Tuesday of the year" ;-)  It's easy to guess that I did NOT, in fact go to the Farmer's market as I was looking forward to.

I also could NOT sleep in for a few hours to catch up on sleep I decided to lose to see the new Brontë film. I turns out I had to go to the Brazilian consulate to notarize a copy of my Brazilian ID card so we can send it express to Brazil so that the process of figuring out my father-in-law's estate can proceed! :-(

It was just an extremely long day. Instead of driving for my regular maximum of 3h, I drove for 5+ (total), but I did get to go to IKEA!! And to a Brazilian store and also got to run some other errands.

I didn't get back home until 8:30 pm, though, so I'm trying to work some before I go to bed. I'm ready to crash, but I can't yet! :-(

First Week & the New Normal

I want to write a post about the "new normal" that will be mostly about the way we feel and how life continues after an unexpected and close encounter with death, but that will be at another time.

This was the first week back at work and my husband came back on Monday (that was great, third time we are apart & back together, but also bittersweet, since he had just gone through such a heartbreaking time in Brazil). My brother-, sister-in-law and nephews left and flew back to Cairo on Tuesday.

I had gone to work on Monday, but I taught for the first time on Wednesday and... in spite of how exhausted I continue to feel after my mega-commute of 88 miles each way... I am THRILLED, beyond excited and amazed at the fact that I have Tuesdays and Thursdays ALL TO MY OWN SELF!!! That's also part of the glorious new normal of my new work contract. I'm sure that it will greatly increase my quality of life, not to mention the quality of my teaching!

So, yeah... after an exhausting week of double-single parent and constant Olympic Games watching we had the first full week of school for the boys and first week for me. K starts next week. Yeah, the new-normal is soon going to be in full-swing.

I hope to fully enjoy this weekend and wish that you do too!

First Day (2nd round)

Today was my first day at U#2 and it was ok. I have to get used again to driving over 150 miles each day. When I'm not used to it I just feel exhausted...

Oh, and if I want to do some shopping afterwards (of groceries or just walk around & relax) I need to be prepared for 11-hour days again... Sigh...

I will acclimate soon enough to my new routine, but now it's 9:40 pm and I'm ready to go to sleep in my cozy bed!

The day wasn't better only because I was unable to leave earlier and thus got there kind of late. If my work computer's keyboard's batteries weren't dead I would have been able to print and copy the syllabus and handout before class, but I needed to get new batteries and then was a few minutes late for my first class. :-(

And then I wanted to leave right after my last class so I didn't have lunch and went to meet with my colleague instead. It was a good conversation and I hope we can make positive changes to the language program. With the new contract I finally few like I am truly part of the program, what a relief.

Because of the scarcity of time in my office before class and between classes and meetings I was barely able to talk to my friends/office mates. :-( We need to plan to get together soon, I've missed them!

Most important, I DO NOT have to teach at 8 am tomorrow morning!! I know that this will make ALL the difference in my life this semester. I'm so happy!

Can't wait for next school year, though, when I will actually have TWO DAYS completely free  (Tu/Th). I can hardly believe that this will happen and I'm looking forward to being a much better teacher (not to mention a happier more rested person) because of that.

Trying to Work & about Going Back in Spring Semester

I already worked last week, but it's this week that I'm gearing up to really start working and doing my mega-commute before teaching my classes at U#2.

I am preparing my syllabi right now and it's a lot of work because I am using a brand new textbook and workbook for one of my classes, and I'm hoping with all my heart that this book will be great. It's very time-consuming and horribly tedious to prepare a new syllabus with a new book, but I hope I can finish tonight or, at the latest, tomorrow morning so I can print the documents at U#1 and only have to copy them at U#2 on Wednesday morning before my classes.

Sigh...

I don't like to go back to work after a long break. In the Fall the break is longer, the students will mostly be new, so there's a lot of novelty and excitement, but in the Spring it's very very cold, the days are shorter, I know it will take long for it to warm up and for the days to be longer. It's ridiculous to think like this, but I can't wait for Spring Break and I have a feeling that February will be the longest, slowest month ever.

Sigh again.

I'm glad that this first week of work is shorter and also that I don't start until Wednesday. Next week will be the tough week to contend with. Maybe I'll car-pool with my friend at least one day -- that would make everything better!

I hope everyone has a great semester, whether you've already started or are starting tomorrow!

GOT THE JOB!!!!

PHEW!!!!

What a relief!! Oh, what a relief. 3 year contract. Decent salary. Now I have (and want) to ditch U#1 (where my husband works). I will miss it. Just one tiny bit. (the people a lot) Sigh...

Oh, thank you Lord!

Sigh...

The mega-commute remains, but I'm used to it by now. ;-)

First Day

My first day went well, it's just hard to get used to the "mega commute" all over again! :-(

Good thing that last Monday and this Friday I was & will be car pooling with a friend (not next week, though)
:-(

I can't write much because I need to go to bed, it was a looong day...

Last Day... (and Memories of First Days Past)

... technically I have one more free day, Thursday, but today is the last day before I enter the classroom and begin teaching again for 15 weeks.

So many mixed feelings. It's hard to deal with all that goes through my head as I walk through campus...

... first, a strong recollection of those pretty magical, once in a lifetime days of March 1990, my first days in college. Huge university in Brazil (over 50K students, extremely large campus). Taking a super crowded bus by myself to the other side of the city, trying to find elective classes to fill up my partly empty schedule. Navigating a strange building, classroom locations, how to order course packets and buy copies of texts (long boring lines at the copy center in the basement of the building).

Meeting new people, outside of my own little private school, religious college campus (where my parents worked), marveling at how nice everyone was (topic of the very first conversation I had with my future husband a few weeks later).

Now I'm much older and I'm in another country at a completely different university, but the excitement I see in the incoming students is the same I felt. The energy is the same and I know I'm in the right place, I belong here. Sort of.

... I have much dimmer recollections of my first weeks each Fall in graduate school. Nothing really magical anymore, and it didn't cross my mind yesterday, but my first few weeks back in that campus in 2012 were pretty magical, but all that magic has gone away.

... Now I wonder -- will I have a contract for next year again? Will they ever give me a three year contract? I go to the welcome reception and see those fresh faced incoming graduate students and I feel despondent. Do they know they're destined to adjunct life? Have they really drank the Koolaid and thing they'll get a "real job" someday?

It's more bitter than sweet now. My colleague, that I have learned not to dread anymore, full of hir empty rhetoric, so not really integrated with the other faculty, at least apparently not with lecturers. Talking of the need s/he has to publish not to be outdated (spoken by someone who finished the degree in 2012. How am I, from 2008, but hopelessly out of the game, out of everything?)

Yeah, it's tough. So I try to enjoy my last day. I printed and copied the syllabi (though not the calendar for two of the sections) and I'm preparing the name tags that I use every semester. I'm thinking of what to say and hoping that the drive goes well.

Still Not Done! :-( & My Genius Writing Partner :-)

I hope to write a different post soon, but I suppose I'll wait until Friday, or Sunday, when I should be fully done with both universities (I'm still at the same point I was in the previous post from Monday evening)...

Yesterday was a long day. I spent most of it on a teaching retreat (at a beautiful location, with delicious food and nice company, thankfully!), then I did a series of trips to several grocery stores, stopping at various points in my 70 minute commute back home, and making it a 4 hour affair -- that was very tiresome!

My husband's students are coming for an end-of-the-semester dinner tonight, (sigh...) but I also took so long because I always pick up several items for a friend every time I go to one of my favorite grocery stores and yesterday it was time-consuming because I had to email her photos of different things to check if I was buying the right things. And I still need to go to Costco today to finish the grocery shopping! We're preparing a Mexican (Chipotle eatery-style) meal since yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. :-)

Then, while I was driving home from my last stop I saw a new email about the letters of recommendation and freaked out BIG TIME (because I didn't realize the letters needed to be submitted by the deadline too! So I hadn't said that to my references!). So I got home nervous and high on adrenaline and because it was 9 pm and I still needed to feed the boys something and had to put away all the groceries, but all I wanted/needed was to sit at the computer and write emails to people, I screamed at my poor husband and it was not a pretty sight.

huge sigh...

I did calm down, prepared something for the boys, wrote all the emails, and got the answers I needed, thankfully. And then, around 11 pm K and I sat down to work on the application materials. He edited my cover letter for a couple of hours by himself and then we revised it together.

He's a GENIUS writing these things, my husband is. What would I do without him? No wonder he got four interviews (including one at an Ivy-League school) and almost got a grant he applied for. He has learned to write these things!!

I was joking that he's my ninja-writer husband to which he replied that ninjas are not only precise and skillful but FAST and he's very, very slow when writing, so I had to drop the metaphor... sigh...

OK, I just heard back from my last reference and will now login to the job application site and provide the information for each of them. I'll keep you updated about the job application!

P.S. it's such a gorgeous day! I wish I didn't have to work and grade and give exams, etc... (I have two students taking tomorrow's exam at U#1 early later this morning...)

Snow Day for THEM, but not for me! Not fair! :-(

It happened again (including my husband and U#1)! But this time it wasn't that bad because I got to meet them at the ski slopes after my teaching! I skied an hour less than they did, but that was OK because my legs weren't in the best shape.

I had a wonderful time skiing this "Blue" slope today twice with no people whatsoever! I'm not very good, but I was going incredibly fast today (1) because it was more powdery than usually -- still mostly "fake" powder -- and (2) because I couldn't really avoid it, not enough strength in legs to zigzag down to slow down and!!! incredibly!!! not falling!!! I did fall exactly once, but it was a small fall from which I quickly recovered.

So I'm creating a new "Ski!"label right now, since it looks like I'll be writing about skiing again in the future (and have in the past -- it'll be fun to go label all those posts!).

OK, so this ended up not being as much about the failed snow day. I did leave about 40 minutes earlier, but it was ok, after I got farther away from home all snow turned to rain. (I still have some blizzard envy, but just a teeny tiny bit! ;-) And classes were good. I'm so thrilled I finally figured out the online quiz thing. Now I hope the students won't hate the quizzes and complain that there were technical problems! Sigh...

Now I'll go take a hot shower, yay!

First Day Blues

I'm not looking forward to going back to teaching this afternoon. The facts that I don't yet have a contract at U#2 and that at U#1 I've been having less and less students register for my classes every Fall are just depressing.

I hope I will soon get more energized when I meet the students and begin to interact with them. I need to feel more enthusiastic so they will be too! Hopefully adrenaline will kick and things will fall into place. Sigh...

There are many good things to consider, actually:

• I now have a great car for my mega-commute, 
• I have Fridays off (though I'll be taking on a 6-week project at U#1, if accepted, and I've scheduled multiple therapy appointments for this day), 
• I have a new, amazing office in a renovated building (I hope to have time to write a post about this later)... 

And of course some negative things, the main one is: I didn't finish the HUGE translation project I started in the summer and now I have to try and squeeze it in while teaching 5 classes, with 11 contact-hours per week and around 10 hours of commuting...

I know it will all work out at the end, but I feel overwhelmed and not very hopeful. I will have to write about this later, but I think that having the ADHD diagnosis is actually being detrimental to my well-being right now rather than helpful. :-( I just feel like I'm trapped and there's no way out, whereas before I just rolled with the punches & got stuff haphazardly done, but mostly done. Now it's like I'm paralyzed by own incompetence.

GAH!!!

Sorry about the negativity. Hopefully I'll be over all this soon. or not. we'll see...

Ignorance is Bliss! ;-)

I just renewed my parking permit for U#2.

I need to park there (after my 76 mile long trip), there's no way around it. I just didn't know how much I was paying to park. Until now, that is.

When I started teaching there I simply drove to the parking office on one of the days of my hectic orientation (I was 2 days late to the week-long orientation meetings because I was returning from Brazil) and signed up for payroll deduction.

Last year parking services sent me an email about the renewal and I didn't even click on the attached form, I just replied saying I wanted to renew via payroll deduction (they gave that option in the email).

So... when I opened the PDF form a few minutes ago and saw that I need to pay $538 dollars to park I was pretty shocked/bummed. I know I've been paying a similar amount for two years (last year it was 516, though, I finally opened that PDF), but still, it's quite a bit of money!

Add to that the monthly cost of gas and that explains a bit why my seemingly respectable wages don't go very far! :-(

And now, every morning when I park I will be thinking of how much I have to pay to do that... sigh... it's just how my silly brain works. "Paying to work" doesn't seem very fair to me. In fact, the article about adjuncts I linked to earlier today mentions something about contingent laborers like myself "subsidizing their students' education*" by providing more labor than we're compensated for (writing rec. letters, going to meetings, etc).

The quote is actually not related to adjuncts' expenses incurred because of teaching, but it still made me think about the costs I have to literally pay to do my job. Sigh...

Well, now I can answer my colleagues when they ask me how much I pay for parking -- as they recently did and I didn't have an answer. I fully enjoyed my ignorance while it lasted, that's for sure!

* full quote:

“Students aren’t getting what they pay for or, if they are, it is because adjuncts themselves are subsidizing their education,” Maria Maisto, president of the adjunct activist group New Faculty Majority, told me. “Adjuncts are donating their time; they are providing it out of pocket."

From Elizabeth Segram's "The Adjunct Revolt: How Poor Professors Are Fighting Back." The Atlantic, 04/28/14

Good thing I didn't blog about the "Contingency Saga" yesterday!

...or I would have cheerfully written that my meeting with NH (new hire) had gone well yesterday afternoon and that it looked like the problem might be solved pretty easily.

ha, ha, ha!

NOT!

Just got an email from NH explaining that it's more complicated than what I thought it was. Silly me, didn't ask for more details on the Friday meeting with the chair. (I panicked/despaired & I wanted out of his office ASAP) Or I could have argued with facts and numbers against the dean's determination that I was to teach only 2 classes in the Fall and 1 in the Spring.

Do they think I will drive 152 miles to teach ONE CLASS?

Wrong!

Can they hire someone else right to move there and teach 3 classes a year?

I don't think so. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everyone else is more desperate than me and they'd move across the country to do that. (?) (in any case I think they can only advertise a full-time position. And they're totally taking me for granted right now. Because I'm replaceable).

~  ~        ~ ~ ~        ~ ~
You know, before I continue, let me just say that I'm confident that I'll find a solution somehow -- be it teaching more classes at U#1 or trying to convince them to hire me full-time, or even continuing at U#2. I have faith that things will be OK, but I still feel the need to commiserate and argue and to talk about trying to solve the problem -- something that is stressful. So I don't want to sound hopeless and angry and upset as I continue to write about this "saga," OK? Thanks.
~  ~        ~ ~ ~        ~ ~

In any case... yeah. I don't know what else I was going to write before going on my digression. It's hard not to be angry at the system, very hard. That's why years and years ago I blogged about my Phd as useless. Because it is. I feel sorry for all MA and Phd students out there, I seriously do. That's why it would be a relief not to be crossing them on the halls anymore. "Look at me! I am you tomorrow!" (not really 'cause this is a top department and they may get jobs, unlike me).

OK, you don't want to hear what's in my head right now, I should stop.

A Week that Felt Like a Year

I can hardly believe that it's only been a week since school started... it feels like much longer.

I'm delighted with my schedule this semester and I think that I have a good chance of being really productive for the first time in a long time! I'm going my mega-commute only 3 days a week, MWF and on the other two days I teach a couple of classes at U#1. The big difference is that I'm teaching in the afternoon (more about that on another post).

After returning from Brazil (I can't believe it's only been 9 days!) the jet-lag is making me go to bed really early (9:30-10, this is incredibly early for me), so I feel more rested than I've ever been! Especially I stopped waking up at 6 am after the third day since we came back. :)

I want to blog more, I want to share photos, but right now I have a house to clean and -- worse yet, I need to cajole two pre-teen boys to leave their ipads and help me! :( My husband, the super-efficient official house-cleaner is in PA where he went to attend a workshop and he won't be home until later this evening.

I hope everyone has had a good week and that you have a relaxing weekend!

First Day Traffic Jam! :-(

An 11 mile long traffic jam is not a good thing on the first day of work! :-( At least, with a smart phone I can know what's going on!

I'm wondering if I'm going to make it on time for my first class and that is pretty stressful. The worst, however, is driving stick shift on a traffic jam…. Especially when it's slightly hilly like it is now...

Wish me luck! I will concentrate on the road now.

Update one: Traffic resumed for a few miles but then it stopped again 3 miles before my exit. And it's a big big hill! We'll see what happens… Have never been so anxious in my life to get over a hill!

The Torture is OVER!

My plan was to have written this earlier in the week or a couple of days ago, titling the post "The Last Week [or Day] of Torture," but now it's all over!

All over but the finals and grading, that is. ;-)  But I can administer and grade lots of finals without a problem if I don't have to drive 152 miles every single day of the week.

IT'S OVER!! And I'll never do it again!! (next Fall I'll go M-Th and I intend to stay overnight once a week.

Yeah, and this past week I didn't even drive every day because of K's procedure on Wednesday (he's doing well, BTW). It was still hard to do it on Thursday and Friday.

All right, I'm up in the middle of the night trying to do Christmas shopping... sigh, but I guess I'll go to bed now!

120 Minutes Driving, 100 Minutes Teaching

That's My life, every Monday and Friday! On Wednesdays I have office hours to add to he mix. :-(

All I wanted was to stay home and to plant bulbs!

But I had to drive to work instead... :-(

I don't have any free time during the day to do anything out in the yard and that's really bothering me. 

A least in the Spring I will have Tu/Th mornings till 2 pm if I want! The problem is that if I want to see more of these:

I need to plant the bulbs I purchased NOW!

Maybe his afternoon I can try to do as much as possible before it gets dark. I'll keep you posted!

Exhaustion...

I knew it was going to be hard, but I thought that somehow I would survive it and I am (surviving, that is), but I'm having an extremely hard time handling the exhaustion.

It's too much. Teaching nearly 7 hours plus over two hours driving. Having breakfast (bread, fruit) & lunch (some chips or crackers, a bagel, or sometimes almost nothing) in the car... Doesn't leave much time for rest, or for grading and preparing.

Today I was frankly frustrated at my exhaustion, at how much I work and how unfair it all seems. I couldn't help but share with students that I was just way too tired and they sympathized. They too are pretty tired, though not as frazzled as I am at this point.

OK, pity party over (for now), just to give way to angst-ridden thoughts. (Ha Ha, welcome to my life!)

What can I do if I realize and decide that I really don't want to spend the rest of my life teaching language? I don't feel I have much chance of getting a "real" academic job -- nothing short of a "miracle" would bring that about.

Right now I just have to keep on living. Trying to plan for next year and not to think too much about the future.

(good luck with that, says one obsessed with planning)

I hope it will all be fine and that in 10, 15 years I can look back and feel good about my life.

I just have to trust and pray that it will happen.

"Your license and registration, please?"

Yeah, it happened today, a year into my daily mega-commute,* I was caught speeding.

And it was not on the highway. :(

As a matter of fact, I was about half a mile from home. Sigh...

I left the house late. Generally the latest acceptable time to leave is 9:30 am, that way I can get there at least 20 minutes before my 11 am class, but this morning I left at 9:40. And I was caught at 9:42...

What happened was that right before I did a left turn into our town's main street (a minor highway that stretches all the way from PA to GA) I had to impatiently wait for this Cadillac in front of me who was turning left, but who was oh, soooooo slooooow! So when I turned I immediately stepped on the gas to get a head start on my 1h10min commute. Just as I accelerated a city cop drove past me in the other direction and I immediately knew!

He began flashing his lights, turned around and I knew he was coming for me, so I slowed down and pulled over. (HUGE sigh... & that horrible sinking feeling).

He told me I was going 59 in a 35 zone... I frankly don't know if I was going that fast, but who am I to argue with a cop's radar?

I explained that I was late for me job in town relatively far away and that I had left the house late preparing my breakfast (and I pointed out to my buttered bread and bowl of grapes by my side).

As I waited I texted K, but I didn't need to have texted him because he'd actually PASSED me on his way to work! :( I ate some grapes, and got online to email my students before I got moving again. I wrote the most unprofessional email in the world. 3 lines:

I left the house late and the police stopped me around the corner.
I may be a few minutes late, please wait for me in class.
You can continue working where we stopped yesterday.

I was 5 minutes late to class -- not that bad!

When the cop, who patrols our street daily so I know him, came back, he told me he wasn't giving me a reckless driving ticket, only a speeding one (phew!). Then he asked about my record (squeaky clean, thanks to going to court twice before) and when I told him he again (like the previous two cops) said I should go to court (Nov. 4, 10 am -- gotta find someone to teach  my classes) because he'd say that I was cordial and stopped immediately.

So, yeah. I will once more get away, phew! The second, and last time was much more disagreeable, on the day of our move from Pennsylvania. I had just driven nearly 5 hours and I was unaware that the speed limit on our new street was 25. I also accelerated slightly when I saw our new rental place (with the truck parked in front) and BAM! was caught by the most disagreeable lady cop in this whole entire state (she is notorious in this whole area, people avoid driving through that town if they can!). She was pretty nice in court, though, especially considering that I really had just moved and didn't know the road or limit!

The worse part was facing my cute, fresh-faced students. "Professor, you weren't speeding, were you?" They said, pretending to be shocked. ;-)

*Not daily in the Spring, though I still commuted everyday, but two of them to the closer university.