Respite

I knew going in that this would be a busy semester, because prepping a grad class from scratch is a huge amount of work. It has gone really well, and it has been exhausting. I posted about it earlier in the semester and that experience has been pretty consistent across the semester: I do tons of prep, I lead mostly successful classes with happy engaged students, I collapse in a wobbly heap afterward.

But I don't have to prep a lecture for Monday, because I have a guest speaker coming in. (Guest! Speaker! I don't even care right now if she turns out to be a mediocre speaker, because I am not going to do the speaking!) I don't have to prep a lecture for Wednesday, because the students are presenting. I don't have to prep a lecture for the following Monday or the following Wednesday, because of Thanksgiving. And then I'll only have four classes left.

I am going to bask for a little while in that sense of relief, and then scramble to catch up on the grading I've been neglecting because lecture prep has been so time-consuming. I think I can I think I can.