I do have both days off this weekend (yay!), but somewhere between the lack of a similar luxury last weekend (and possibly the weekend before that as well) and the need to stay in lab past 7:30pm after getting to lab at 7:30 am and having all but one experiment fail/do badly on me, and having to deal with an entire series of mishaps in animal transfer paperwork, I was ready to declare war on life. I didn't, mostly because I didn't have enough energy at that point to bother, but I had briefly considered wanting a do-over of the week only to realize that no, no I don't, because I've done my best given the circumstances and a do-over would only mean that I'd have to suffer through the week again.
No thank you.
(By the way, by "not enough energy" I meant I tripped and fell getting dressed in the morning and nearly fell asleep on the bus in the evening, missing my bus stop and making it necessary to walk back in the rain.) (Speaking of which, what is with this whether? It's nearly May in Southern California and I'm still wearing sweaters.)
Next week will be equally gruesome, since TAing means that I have to help put together the midterm, take the midterm (timing myself so the teacher'd know how long the exam takes and adjust according as well as figure out which problems are just not working out), grade the midterm (we are doing one TA per problem and have to do a long grading session all together, approximating six hours), on top of running a two-hour review session (with another TA so I'm not totally by myself the entire time, thank God) and grading another problem set. At least I don't have to stay past 6:30pm on any given day, I think.
Wendy's baby came home on Tuesday, so now she's mostly gone from lab. The baby's fine, though apparently he does this thing where if he eats too fast he'll stop breathing. Supposedly (according to the doctor) this is normal. And you can restart his breathing by rubbing his back.
I just think it sounds scary as hell.
No pre-med tried to kill me for giving them their grade for four weeks and counting now. I have gotten used to making up a plan of attack before each section and prodding students to respond during discussion section. TAing, I think, is strangely rewarding. Or at least strangely involving and I feel like I'm being sucked into it because I catch myself making lesson plans at the most random moments. I think I'm learning as much from this as my students. Admittedly in my case this would've been a lot easier if a) we are not dealing with a professor who's teaching for the first time (some days I feel like I'm re-teaching half of the lecture) and b) I'm not also taking two classes (about 4 papers to read and 1 homework assignment per week) and working full time in a lab on top of that. Speaking of which...
Oh God. Two hours. I need to finish making the lesson plan.
1 comment:
I have no idea how you do it O_O All of it.
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