Took on 1.5 new preps, including a couple of DL sections, in the same semester. And underestimated how much time some new assignments would take to grade. So I'm behind on grading, a problem I've had before, but had more or less licked in the last few semesters.
The sad thing is that I actually enjoyed the challenge of the new classes, and they went pretty well. But with a 4/4 load, one has to be very, very careful (or at least I do).
I taught seven classes. While I've done this before, two were classes that I've never taught before and it was WAY too much for me to handle well. While the classes were incredibly fun to teach and I'm glad I was able to, It was too much work and it affected the way I taught, I'm sure of it. My course evals stated that I was "rude" this semester. While I've gotten this a little before, it was stated more so this time than ever before. While I take a certain amount of it as snowflakey BS, I know that because I was so busy and overwhelmed this semester I was less patient than usual. As an adjunct, though, the money was SO good, I couldn't turn it down. Lessons learned.
I got behind in all 5 classes by allowing, nay, encouraging, discussions to go longer than the time I usually allot. Some of them were great discussions, with students really applying the course concepts and vocabulary to things in the news. All of them drew in students who usually keep quiet.
So now I have a few weeks left to cover huge and important aspects of Introduction to Tachyon Emissions and Q-Based Temporal Disruption.
I got suckered in to a "I need to get a B in this class to graduate" sob story from a Snowflake. He wrote an extra, last-minute paper, I gave up about ten precious hours and got behind in the rest of my work...and it turns out that the little twerp failed another class and has to do summer school. Lesson learned (again and again) - don't care more than they do.
I've been experimenting with low-paper syllabi: short handouts that refer to the long-form documents on the course website. Never again: not that most read them closely, but the frequency of basic misunderstandings about policy and assignments was absurd.
Also, spending more time on saying what should go without saying: most of them are public school graduates and the public schools aren't getting better anytime soon.
I may have been somewhat impolitic towards colleagues the last two days, once inadvertently, once more or less deliberately. Could work out fine, could blowback hard....
I spent way too much time on a needy flake who disappeared halfway through the semester. And I knew he was a timesuck, and I should have put my foot down.
In an attempt to get them to do the reading more often, I removed one short (3-4 page) paper from my syllabus, and replaced it with four 1-page respond-to-a-question-about-this-week's-reading papers, to be completed over the course of the semester.
Mistake.
I think it probably did contribute to more students doing the reading each week, but I'm not sure that it helped class discussion, because it was still the same 8 or 10 students participating every week. Also, grading four 1-page papers takes longer than grading one 4-page paper.
Still leaves me with a problem of how to ensure that people do the reading at an institution where they seem to feel that any work required outside of class time is somehow an imposition on them, and an unfair requirement. I guess I'll just bump the class participation percentage of the course grade, and be even more strict about grading it for actual participation.
I let myself get way behind on grading, and I took on additional work that I shouldn't have with my current course load. But the one big thing I screwed up was trusting my students to actually act like adults. I allowed them to come and go as needed (to use the restroom, get a drink, etc.). Because this is discussion based class comprised of juniors and seniors, I expected they could be trusted to do what they needed to and return promptly (as my other students have in the past). Then last week while I was showing a film, three of them just left and never returned. Needless to say, the very next class I made it clear that that privilege was revoked and now no one was allowed to leave class for any reason. I don't know who I'm more disappointed in - my students for taking advantage of my lenience or myself for trusting them.
Signing up to teach summer school. I have only two weeks before it starts and I'm cramming everything I usually teach into a quarter of the time. Fuckin A.
I "allowed" (OK, encouraged) a talented student to write a longer-(and-better)-than-average senior thesis, which the awards committee dismissed out of hand because they didn't want to read it. They said its length was a sign of "mismanagement," never mind that it's pretty damn smart. It's no fun watching your students get screwed over.
Ugh. Taking my uni's new writing requirements seriously and producing a scaffolded set of 3 papers, each incorporating, revising, and extending material from the previous one, for 90 students in 10 weeks, on top of the required final -- and thus overworking my TAs and myself. Lesson learned: they cannot cram new requirements in along with bumping up enrollments and lowering TA support. Screw 'em next time; I have tenure.
I began a research collaboration with faculty who could have really helped increase funding by a factor of 10. Both bailed a week before the proposal was due. A dead mother and a computer crash were the causes of their flakiness. Wonder where they thought of those excuses.
As if that wasn't enough, I deleted a couple of lines of code by accident and fucked up Blogger for a few days. Sorry.
Assigned 5 hand-in assignments instead of the usual 2, for sound pedagogical reasons, but failed to invent a time-dilator that would give me 250% more time to mark them all.
Gave 3 exams and 2 papers in two courses when I swore in December it would be 2 and 1, respectively. I think I'll do 3 and 1 in the fall, somebody hold me to it, please....
Also, failed to get knocked up. Five months trying and frustration increasing. We're one sad household of two. It was particularly awful when we did taxes because we knew we wouldn't have a deduction in 2011. Lots of feelings of failure and anger at God.
Overwrote paper guidelines document for upper div class. It was too helpful. TLDR. Agreed to way too much committee work across campus, not realizing that an "excellent" on service is, de facto, not given in my year and will instead be assigned only in year 5 or 6, as *actual* activity doesn't matter because This Is The Way It Is Done. Next year I'm not volunteering for/ getting roped into ANYTHING and I suspect I'll get the same mark.
I was nice to a student and gave him a B- on his final paper instead of a C+. Then... he b*tched because the overall final grade was a B instead of a B+. And... the student appears to be kooky about it.
And, I know I should know better on being 'nice'. Foolish me!
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. After the usual barage of emails from students trying to get a "grade bump" in one course, I put two grade scales into my Blackboard Announcements for another class: the primary grade scale with a slight curve (and I dropped the lowest of 4 exams) for students that accepted their grade without negotiation and a tougher non-curved grade scale for students who wanted me to "bump up" their grades to the next point. While this seemed like a good idea (at the time), the prospect of the inevitible call from the Dean's shop makes it seem like the concept of holding the line against grade inflation might be dearly purchased and probably not worth the pain. Was the juice worth the squeeze? Also, the TA's in one class I supervise are making life "interesting": a student who wanted to "make up a bad lab" after the fact and the TA greenlighted the idea, the student who lost his lab report and then contacted the Provost's Office because he didn't like "NO!", or the TA who changed report grades AFTER grades had been assigned. While the TA's were instructed NOT to do these kinds of things, my life has much potential suckage!
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. After the usual barage of emails from students trying to get a "grade bump" in one course, I put two grade scales into my Blackboard Announcements for another class: the primary grade scale with a slight curve (and I dropped the lowest of 4 exams) for students that accepted their grade without negotiation and a tougher non-curved grade scale for students who wanted me to "bump up" their grades to the next point. While this seemed like a good idea (at the time), the prospect of the inevitible call from the Dean's shop makes it seem like the concept of holding the line against grade inflation might be dearly purchased and probably not worth the pain. Was the juice worth the squeeze? Also, the TA's in one class I supervise are making life "interesting": a student who wanted to "make up a bad lab" after the fact and the TA greenlighted the idea, the student who lost his lab report and then contacted the Provost's Office because he didn't like "NO!", or the TA who changed report grades AFTER grades had been assigned. While the TA's were instructed NOT to do these kinds of things, my life has much potential suckage!
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. After the usual barage of emails from students trying to get a "grade bump" in one course, I put two grade scales into my Blackboard Announcements for another class: the primary grade scale with a slight curve (and I dropped the lowest of 4 exams) for students that accepted their grade without negotiation and a tougher non-curved grade scale for students who wanted me to "bump up" their grades to the next point. While this seemed like a good idea (at the time), the prospect of the inevitible call from the Dean's shop makes it seem like the concept of holding the line against grade inflation might be dearly purchased and probably not worth the pain. Was the juice worth the squeeze? Also, the TA's in one class I supervise are making life "interesting": a student who wanted to "make up a bad lab" after the fact and the TA greenlighted the idea, the student who lost his lab report and then contacted the Provost's Office because he didn't like "NO!", or the TA who changed report grades AFTER grades had been assigned. While the TA's were instructed NOT to do these kinds of things, my life has much potential suckage!
No, not true. I fucked up my upper-level course at Second String State. I just didn't care about them, I didn't care about the class, and I tried to do too much because I expected the same things from them that I expect from students at Humpshack U. (Many students at Second String State go there because they didn't get into Humpshack's Public Ivy Hallowed Halls.)
On the other hand, my upper-level class at Humpshack freaking rocked. They were amazing. They did great group work (mostly and they (mostly) managed to write interesting papers and they (mostly) participated in discussions and they (mostly) did their reading! I was really impressed with them and I think all of us, including myself, learned a great deal.
Sorry...I just want to love on the upper-level kids at Humpshack a little bit because I hated so hard on Second String.
Also, I failed to Make a Serious Emotional Commitment and I Failed To Create A Satisfactory Argument (in the eyes of my committee chair) and Thus I Failed To Defend My Dissertation.
That last one is seriously bad, but I have a dissertation coach now (srsly, it's bad) and I am taking more valium so I haven't put myself in hospital again. yay!
(Oh, that's another achievement: I was not hospitalized this year! go me!)
Count me amongst those who gave MUCH too much attention to one particularly spectacular flaky flake.
Superflake Sara started the term complaining about classmates' lack of rigor and scholarship. Funny, but by Week 2, Sara got feedback that her own contributions were less than.
That begat 24 separate "Ask the Instructor" posts and 20 personal EMails (yes, I counted), not to mention assignment feedback twice as long and complex as classmates'.
But that didn't dissuade Sara from contacting virtually every University office to complain about not getting a response from the instructor, leading to the department chair to actually post a "cease and desist" comment on "Ask the Instructor."
The piece de flakery came when Sara tried to mobilize classmates in a discussion forum, but ignored that 100% of the responses expressed SATISFACTION with their feedback and APPRECIATION for standards being maintained.
After the attempted hijack of the discussion forum, Sara got a sharply worded message from yours truly that such behavior violates the very Code of Conduct she supposedly sought to preserve.
The best WTF moment was getting her response (literally 10" after my message was sent). Sara agrees the term is nearly over and she is preparing to move on. I misinterpreted her behavior as belligerent, but my own behavior was unprofessional. But, ultimately she has decided that hamster fur weaving is not for her and will be withdrawing from the program.
Does that count as a (disastrously hard-fought) win?
I agreed to do extra service work, serve on a thesis committee and teach a new course.
I also let Annoying Annie (lesser cousin of Superflake Sara) get away with a bit too much before I cut her off. Fortunately she only posted 3 or 4 inappropriate messages to WebCT and mostly switched to email.
I talk a night class and a weekend class, so I tried to get by without daycare. I did that the whole year, in fact. It meant that I rarely slept, rarely saw my husband, and felt hopeless and self-destructive for ten solid months. I don't think I did my kids any big favor by pretending to be a stay-at-home mom, when I was bitchy and resentful that I had so much work to do and no time to do it. I think working full-time in the fall with full-time daycare is going to make us all a lot happier.
@Blackdog: one of the (very, very) few advantages of teaching too many classes at too many different institutions is that it helps identify what's you and what's the students/other external circumstances. Sounds like you've shown you can be a very successful teacher of upper-level courses, given willing students; that counts as a win, in my book.
One of the major disadvantages, of course, is that it's very, very hard to make substantive progress on a dissertation while juggling so many classes. I'm pretty sure one major reason I managed to successfully defend when I did is that nobody actually read the damn thing; if they had, I probably would have had to spend at least another summer revising (now I just have to worry that somebody eventually *will* read the damn thing; so far, it's been cited a couple of times, reasonably kindly, so I don't think it's a complete disaster, but. . . .) I hope the coach helps; I've thought of setting up in that business, except that it does seem rather ridiculous for someone who took 15 years to finish to do so (on the other hand, most counselors I know have made extensive use of other counselors' services. . . .)
And yes, staying out of the hospital while juggling all of the above counts as a significant achievement.
Many of my students fucked up by using different colored fonts in their papers.
ReplyDeleteUsually, said fonts corresponded with their plagiarized sentences. But not always.
Took on 1.5 new preps, including a couple of DL sections, in the same semester. And underestimated how much time some new assignments would take to grade. So I'm behind on grading, a problem I've had before, but had more or less licked in the last few semesters.
ReplyDeleteThe sad thing is that I actually enjoyed the challenge of the new classes, and they went pretty well. But with a 4/4 load, one has to be very, very careful (or at least I do).
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI taught seven classes. While I've done this before, two were classes that I've never taught before and it was WAY too much for me to handle well. While the classes were incredibly fun to teach and I'm glad I was able to, It was too much work and it affected the way I taught, I'm sure of it. My course evals stated that I was "rude" this semester. While I've gotten this a little before, it was stated more so this time than ever before. While I take a certain amount of it as snowflakey BS, I know that because I was so busy and overwhelmed this semester I was less patient than usual. As an adjunct, though, the money was SO good, I couldn't turn it down. Lessons learned.
ReplyDeleteI got behind in all 5 classes by allowing, nay, encouraging, discussions to go longer than the time I usually allot. Some of them were great discussions, with students really applying the course concepts and vocabulary to things in the news. All of them drew in students who usually keep quiet.
ReplyDeleteSo now I have a few weeks left to cover huge and important aspects of Introduction to Tachyon Emissions and Q-Based Temporal Disruption.
(You're welcome, EMH.)
I got suckered in to a "I need to get a B in this class to graduate" sob story from a Snowflake. He wrote an extra, last-minute paper, I gave up about ten precious hours and got behind in the rest of my work...and it turns out that the little twerp failed another class and has to do summer school. Lesson learned (again and again) - don't care more than they do.
ReplyDeleteI've been experimenting with low-paper syllabi: short handouts that refer to the long-form documents on the course website. Never again: not that most read them closely, but the frequency of basic misunderstandings about policy and assignments was absurd.
ReplyDeleteAlso, spending more time on saying what should go without saying: most of them are public school graduates and the public schools aren't getting better anytime soon.
I may have been somewhat impolitic towards colleagues the last two days, once inadvertently, once more or less deliberately. Could work out fine, could blowback hard....
I spent way too much time on a needy flake who disappeared halfway through the semester. And I knew he was a timesuck, and I should have put my foot down.
ReplyDeleteIn an attempt to get them to do the reading more often, I removed one short (3-4 page) paper from my syllabus, and replaced it with four 1-page respond-to-a-question-about-this-week's-reading papers, to be completed over the course of the semester.
ReplyDeleteMistake.
I think it probably did contribute to more students doing the reading each week, but I'm not sure that it helped class discussion, because it was still the same 8 or 10 students participating every week. Also, grading four 1-page papers takes longer than grading one 4-page paper.
Still leaves me with a problem of how to ensure that people do the reading at an institution where they seem to feel that any work required outside of class time is somehow an imposition on them, and an unfair requirement. I guess I'll just bump the class participation percentage of the course grade, and be even more strict about grading it for actual participation.
I let myself get way behind on grading, and I took on additional work that I shouldn't have with my current course load. But the one big thing I screwed up was trusting my students to actually act like adults. I allowed them to come and go as needed (to use the restroom, get a drink, etc.). Because this is discussion based class comprised of juniors and seniors, I expected they could be trusted to do what they needed to and return promptly (as my other students have in the past). Then last week while I was showing a film, three of them just left and never returned. Needless to say, the very next class I made it clear that that privilege was revoked and now no one was allowed to leave class for any reason. I don't know who I'm more disappointed in - my students for taking advantage of my lenience or myself for trusting them.
ReplyDeleteTrying to teach a semester's worth of material on the quarter system.
ReplyDelete:-(
..."trusting my [grad] students to actually act like adults" with the sense given a goose.
ReplyDeleteSigning up to teach summer school. I have only two weeks before it starts and I'm cramming everything I usually teach into a quarter of the time. Fuckin A.
ReplyDeleteI "allowed" (OK, encouraged) a talented student to write a longer-(and-better)-than-average senior thesis, which the awards committee dismissed out of hand because they didn't want to read it. They said its length was a sign of "mismanagement," never mind that it's pretty damn smart. It's no fun watching your students get screwed over.
ReplyDeleteUgh. Taking my uni's new writing requirements seriously and producing a scaffolded set of 3 papers, each incorporating, revising, and extending material from the previous one, for 90 students in 10 weeks, on top of the required final -- and thus overworking my TAs and myself. Lesson learned: they cannot cram new requirements in along with bumping up enrollments and lowering TA support. Screw 'em next time; I have tenure.
ReplyDeleteAnd I am NOT done. We have 3 brutal weeks left.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI began a research collaboration with faculty who could have really helped increase funding by a factor of 10. Both bailed a week before the proposal was due. A dead mother and a computer crash were the causes of their flakiness. Wonder where they thought of those excuses.
ReplyDeleteAs if that wasn't enough, I deleted a couple of lines of code by accident and fucked up Blogger for a few days. Sorry.
Assigned 5 hand-in assignments instead of the usual 2, for sound pedagogical reasons, but failed to invent a time-dilator that would give me 250% more time to mark them all.
ReplyDeleteGave 3 exams and 2 papers in two courses when I swore in December it would be 2 and 1, respectively. I think I'll do 3 and 1 in the fall, somebody hold me to it, please....
ReplyDeleteAlso, failed to get knocked up. Five months trying and frustration increasing. We're one sad household of two. It was particularly awful when we did taxes because we knew we wouldn't have a deduction in 2011. Lots of feelings of failure and anger at God.
I fucked up the cod. Should have deep fried it.
ReplyDeleteAnd to CMP: Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Get it.
My students proved to be the better germ warfare tacticians. I was sick a lot.
ReplyDeleteOverwrote paper guidelines document for upper div class. It was too helpful. TLDR.
ReplyDeleteAgreed to way too much committee work across campus, not realizing that an "excellent" on service is, de facto, not given in my year and will instead be assigned only in year 5 or 6, as *actual* activity doesn't matter because This Is The Way It Is Done. Next year I'm not volunteering for/ getting roped into ANYTHING and I suspect I'll get the same mark.
I was nice to a student and gave him a B- on his final paper instead of a C+. Then... he b*tched because the overall final grade was a B instead of a B+. And... the student appears to be kooky about it.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I know I should know better on being 'nice'. Foolish me!
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. After the usual barage of emails from students trying to get a "grade bump" in one course, I put two grade scales into my Blackboard Announcements for another class: the primary grade scale with a slight curve (and I dropped the lowest of 4 exams) for students that accepted their grade without negotiation and a tougher non-curved grade scale for students who wanted me to "bump up" their grades to the next point. While this seemed like a good idea (at the time), the prospect of the inevitible call from the Dean's shop makes it seem like the concept of holding the line against grade inflation might be dearly purchased and probably not worth the pain. Was the juice worth the squeeze?
ReplyDeleteAlso, the TA's in one class I supervise are making life "interesting": a student who wanted to "make up a bad lab" after the fact and the TA greenlighted the idea, the student who lost his lab report and then contacted the Provost's Office because he didn't like "NO!", or the TA who changed report grades AFTER grades had been assigned. While the TA's were instructed NOT to do these kinds of things, my life has much potential suckage!
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. After the usual barage of emails from students trying to get a "grade bump" in one course, I put two grade scales into my Blackboard Announcements for another class: the primary grade scale with a slight curve (and I dropped the lowest of 4 exams) for students that accepted their grade without negotiation and a tougher non-curved grade scale for students who wanted me to "bump up" their grades to the next point. While this seemed like a good idea (at the time), the prospect of the inevitible call from the Dean's shop makes it seem like the concept of holding the line against grade inflation might be dearly purchased and probably not worth the pain. Was the juice worth the squeeze?
ReplyDeleteAlso, the TA's in one class I supervise are making life "interesting": a student who wanted to "make up a bad lab" after the fact and the TA greenlighted the idea, the student who lost his lab report and then contacted the Provost's Office because he didn't like "NO!", or the TA who changed report grades AFTER grades had been assigned. While the TA's were instructed NOT to do these kinds of things, my life has much potential suckage!
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. After the usual barage of emails from students trying to get a "grade bump" in one course, I put two grade scales into my Blackboard Announcements for another class: the primary grade scale with a slight curve (and I dropped the lowest of 4 exams) for students that accepted their grade without negotiation and a tougher non-curved grade scale for students who wanted me to "bump up" their grades to the next point. While this seemed like a good idea (at the time), the prospect of the inevitible call from the Dean's shop makes it seem like the concept of holding the line against grade inflation might be dearly purchased and probably not worth the pain. Was the juice worth the squeeze?
ReplyDeleteAlso, the TA's in one class I supervise are making life "interesting": a student who wanted to "make up a bad lab" after the fact and the TA greenlighted the idea, the student who lost his lab report and then contacted the Provost's Office because he didn't like "NO!", or the TA who changed report grades AFTER grades had been assigned. While the TA's were instructed NOT to do these kinds of things, my life has much potential suckage!
Oh, fuck, everything.
ReplyDeleteNo, not true. I fucked up my upper-level course at Second String State. I just didn't care about them, I didn't care about the class, and I tried to do too much because I expected the same things from them that I expect from students at Humpshack U. (Many students at Second String State go there because they didn't get into Humpshack's Public Ivy Hallowed Halls.)
On the other hand, my upper-level class at Humpshack freaking rocked. They were amazing. They did great group work (mostly and they (mostly) managed to write interesting papers and they (mostly) participated in discussions and they (mostly) did their reading! I was really impressed with them and I think all of us, including myself, learned a great deal.
Sorry...I just want to love on the upper-level kids at Humpshack a little bit because I hated so hard on Second String.
Also, I failed to Make a Serious Emotional Commitment and I Failed To Create A Satisfactory Argument (in the eyes of my committee chair) and Thus I Failed To Defend My Dissertation.
That last one is seriously bad, but I have a dissertation coach now (srsly, it's bad) and I am taking more valium so I haven't put myself in hospital again. yay!
(Oh, that's another achievement: I was not hospitalized this year! go me!)
Count me amongst those who gave MUCH too much attention to one particularly spectacular flaky flake.
ReplyDeleteSuperflake Sara started the term complaining about classmates' lack of rigor and scholarship. Funny, but by Week 2, Sara got feedback that her own contributions were less than.
That begat 24 separate "Ask the Instructor" posts and 20 personal EMails (yes, I counted), not to mention assignment feedback twice as long and complex as classmates'.
But that didn't dissuade Sara from contacting virtually every University office to complain about not getting a response from the instructor, leading to the department chair to actually post a "cease and desist" comment on "Ask the Instructor."
The piece de flakery came when Sara tried to mobilize classmates in a discussion forum, but ignored that 100% of the responses expressed SATISFACTION with their feedback and APPRECIATION for standards being maintained.
After the attempted hijack of the discussion forum, Sara got a sharply worded message from yours truly that such behavior violates the very Code of Conduct she supposedly sought to preserve.
The best WTF moment was getting her response (literally 10" after my message was sent). Sara agrees the term is nearly over and she is preparing to move on. I misinterpreted her behavior as belligerent, but my own behavior was unprofessional. But, ultimately she has decided that hamster fur weaving is not for her and will be withdrawing from the program.
Does that count as a (disastrously hard-fought) win?
I agreed to do extra service work, serve on a thesis committee and teach a new course.
ReplyDeleteI also let Annoying Annie (lesser cousin of Superflake Sara) get away with a bit too much before I cut her off. Fortunately she only posted 3 or 4 inappropriate messages to WebCT and mostly switched to email.
Oh, and I treated my students like adults...
I bought a copy of the Lego Pirates of the Caribbean video game before my grading is done.
ReplyDeleteI.I.-- it's over! I've had a Fallout 3-related grading breakdown before, and have just narrowly escaped a similar fate with Assassins Creed.
ReplyDeleteI talk a night class and a weekend class, so I tried to get by without daycare. I did that the whole year, in fact. It meant that I rarely slept, rarely saw my husband, and felt hopeless and self-destructive for ten solid months. I don't think I did my kids any big favor by pretending to be a stay-at-home mom, when I was bitchy and resentful that I had so much work to do and no time to do it. I think working full-time in the fall with full-time daycare is going to make us all a lot happier.
ReplyDeleteFreaking iPhone. That should say "I taught"...
ReplyDelete@Blackdog: one of the (very, very) few advantages of teaching too many classes at too many different institutions is that it helps identify what's you and what's the students/other external circumstances. Sounds like you've shown you can be a very successful teacher of upper-level courses, given willing students; that counts as a win, in my book.
ReplyDeleteOne of the major disadvantages, of course, is that it's very, very hard to make substantive progress on a dissertation while juggling so many classes. I'm pretty sure one major reason I managed to successfully defend when I did is that nobody actually read the damn thing; if they had, I probably would have had to spend at least another summer revising (now I just have to worry that somebody eventually *will* read the damn thing; so far, it's been cited a couple of times, reasonably kindly, so I don't think it's a complete disaster, but. . . .) I hope the coach helps; I've thought of setting up in that business, except that it does seem rather ridiculous for someone who took 15 years to finish to do so (on the other hand, most counselors I know have made extensive use of other counselors' services. . . .)
And yes, staying out of the hospital while juggling all of the above counts as a significant achievement.