Looming Misery: When Life and Teaching Collide.

Say that you had agreed to teach a remedial writing class in Spring. I mean, you taught it in the Fall, and survived, so at least the prep. is mostly done.

Even though you need to revise the syllabus, because it turned out you were teaching the wrong material (I would link to the post, but it seems to have gone with Academic Mizery to the bottom of the muck, never to be seen or heard from again. I'll throw it in the comments if anyone cares).

So you sign the contract, take the overload (Woo! Money!), and work on other things, like the job you were hired to do, waiting for the class (it's an 8 week course) to start. And then, one thing after another happens in your non-work life.

You leave your partner of over a decade, because you have the sudden realization that the PATTERN was never going to change, and, to mangle a cliche, you care more about their happiness than they do.

So. Class starts the first week of March. You found a new apartment. Your lease starts March 1. You have started dividing out the DVD's and cookware, and laundry baskets, and graphic novels. You comfort yourself that you will never need to move their stack of porn magazines from the 1990's again, or clean their beard hair out of the sink.

And only now does it occur to you: You teach as an overload on top of your 40 hours a week job. And now you have to move WHILE teaching a writing intensive class, and prepping new material that you haven't taught before.

Also, you've decided to stop drinking for a while.

Well then. This will be... fun?

--Madame Librarian