I don't ever check my work email on Sundays, unless I have one of those extremely rare Sunday commitments like a search committee dinner -- maybe three times in ten years at Gladlyville U. There are no emergencies in academia, I tell myself. And for the most part this has been a good policy. All day today, though, I have been flinching at the thought of what is waiting for me in my inbox.
Don't borrow trouble, I have been telling myself.
Dread is a waste of time, I have been telling myself.
Things always work out, I have been telling myself.
But I have never had so many students lose a big whack of points right at the end of the semester, because I've never had so many students misappropriate other people's words in a big assignment.
It was a very pleasant Mothers' Day here. We dug up a corner of the yard and put in hens-and-chicks, as planned, along with a sedum and a golden-budded tickseed and a perennial variety of purple salvia. We planted them today with an eye to the future, when we will dig up MOOOORRRE of the grass because yards are overrated.
The sun came out and I went for a run around the nearby lake teeming with red-winged blackbirds and fluffy goslings. I did encounter some hissing parent geese, but nobody as aggressive as You-Shall-Not-Pass Gander-alf from a few years ago. I heard from all of the faraway kids and FaceTimed with Alex, and we ordered delicious Indian takeout for dinner.
All day long that email uncertainty has niggled at me, though: how unpleasant will it be? Probably at least medium unpleasant. I guess we'll see.
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