Like many of us at this stage of the year, I have a cold.
I tried hard to prevent it - I've been eating all my veggies, chugging vitamins, trying to get enough sleep, even drying out my hands using the sanitiser gloop. This is just rearranging deck chairs, though, because the major problem is exposure to the source - the seething plague pit that is your typical gathering of undergraduates. So, the inevitable happened, and I have a cold. Which makes me cough. Oh boy am I a GOOD cougher. I sound like a 60-a-day smoker at their last gasp despite having been too uncool to ever light up behind the bike sheds*. So now on top of all the vitamins and the usual keeping-up-an-appearance-of-socially-acceptable-levels-of-sanity meds, I'm also taking a couple of cold meds. And they don't work perfectly.
However, I have continued to do my best to teach my classes. It's Friday morning, I've just taken a probably-overdose-sized slug of cough suppressant, and my last proper lecture of the week is going OK. With the microphone on max I can talk quietly enough to not set off The Cough yet still be heard, and I'm managing to keep my voice mobile and expressive (earlier in the week I reckon I sounded like Darth Vader only without the menace). And the students seem interested - a laugh at my jokes, some attentive scribbling at the expected points when I explain a term.
But then.
Why do the fates hate me this week??? Why???
Then.
The fire alarm went off.
Annual practice.
Off we troop, down the stairs, out into the cool October air, at the fast clip to the assembly point. Stand around. Envy the grad students who somehow all made a rapid, do-not-stop evacuation yet are still all clutching full cups of coffee. Stand around. Then we get to return to the warmer building.
Yes, the change in temperature set off The Cough. After five minutes of three coughing breaks per sentence, I took pity on the students and on my larynx and cut the lecture short.
It was going so well before the stupid fire bell went off.
I know we need to be safe... but oh, I am fed up!
And have three hours before I can take another slug from the magic cough medicine bottle, and six more hours of classes, which means at least seven hours until I get to walk into my own house, brew a hot toddy, change into some scruffy sweats and collapse onto the sofa...
*smokers here still have to light up behind the bike shed - sorry, go to the "designated smoking area north of the bicycle corral at the rear entrance of Fancy Dead Donor Building" - and I'm still not cool enough to be part of the gang.
You practice fire drills in college? By now, even students should know to drag their knuckles towards the exit and not mouth-breathe the smoke.
ReplyDeleteThis is not necessary at my school. My colleagues and I set off the fire alarm with chemistry demonstrations on a regular basis so there's no need for practice. They could give us a chance to practice disabling the smoke alarms but then our insurance premiums get a little pricy.
Expectorant is your friend.
ReplyDeleteIt tastes like ass, but if you keep taking it until you can taste the meds in the goo you cough up, you can keep a one week cold from becoming a semester-long ordeal.
Oh and don't take an expectorant/cough suppressant mix. The whole point of thinning your lung mucus is so you can get rid of it, not allow it to settle to a more comfortable position.