Week 9? 10? 1000000? Who knows anymore

On Monday morning a student asked me how I was doing and I responded with "Well, I'm glad it's Friday" so that is where I am in my life. The days are blurry, and obscured my own anxieties of finishing strong. Finishing the school year strong as an educator, and as a grad student. Most days I feel lucky if I leave the house with my pants and shoes on. It is currently 9 in the morning, and I have been sitting at Starbucks since it opened at 5 getting all of the reading for Teaching College Comp for next week. From here I will go to Barnes and Noble to pick up AP books so I have new practice exams to go through my students for the last 13 school days before the big exam. After that, I will sit in my apartment, spread out my 10 sources for the Literature Review for my Henry James class due Wednesday, and start piecing it together. I imagine I will eat some food at some point, and if I am lucky, I will be able to stop working by about 9pm, go to the gym, then come home, put a movie on (feeling like a Zombieland re-watch might be in order) and fall asleep, just to get up at 5am tomorrow to get all of the work for my Anthony Trollope class done.

I have also started piecing my syllabus together for AP Language and Composition (a class which gets some mention on next week's readings for TCC) with an eye towards FYC. As it is customary for students who get a 4 or 5 on the AP exam to be exempt from FYC courses, I want to fashion my course in a similar way to how I will fashion a FYC course, but still teaching the complexities of the AP exam, and doing the regular job of a high school English teacher. The delicate balance is proving complicated. I am meant to teach book length texts, and I have 4 that I am all prepared to use, but I want to make sure the students are introduced to a wide variety of texts from multiple genres as well. I am a person who, it turns out, finds a sense of calm in the crafting of syllabi. It is the same sense of calm I get when doing a puzzle. My mind enjoys trying to make all of the pieces fit. Is there a job where I can just get paid to create syllabi all day every day?

Okay, off to the bookstore, where I have been given strict orders from my wife to not buy anymore books to add to my summer reading as we are supposed to be downsizing, but in the last 3 weeks I have purchased 12 books.