the odds of getting more gray hairs this semester...

i'm both in complete disbelief and quite happy that it's already march. we have about 9 weeks of class left and i can honestly say that for so many reasons, i cannot wait for this semester to be over. it has been one of the most challenging of my career so far. keep in mind some of my teaching career involved being a part-time adjunct while working as a full-time graduate student and even working as a full-time advisor while trying to write my dissertation. so to say this semester is a struggle says quite a lot.

the difficulty was there from the beginning. i'm scheduled to teach four courses, which is a hefty load. one is intro which i love, two are social psychology which is okay, and one is stats which is really hard to teach. i did manage to get an A in stats in graduate school, but i'm not sure that reflects my ability to teach this subject. in fact, i know it doesn't. luckily that course only has 8 students in it, but that has made things difficult at times as well and the small numbers even resulted in having to revamp the entire syllabus a few weeks ago. so my scheduled load alone is enough to make me go prematurely gray. on top of that, i'm covering another section of stats for a colleague in the psychology department who recently had a baby. the baby arrived earlier than we all expected, so that meant the course wasn't as planned out as either of us would have liked. but i jumped in and luckily it's a great group of students who seem to understand what i'm talking about so far. but it means that i have another prep, because unfortunately our courses are not really aligned in terms of subject matter and it was not really possible to have both stats courses learning the same things. i feel like every minute of the day i am either writing a new stats lecture, grading papers, or writing a stats lecture. :) so i welcome the end of the semester a great deal. my coverage of the 5th course only lasts until mid-april and i can already guess that i will be ready to get back to my usual schedule.

on top of all of that, we have been dumped on with snow this winter as you read in my last post. luckily i think it's finally supposed to warm up soon and melt it all (which will likely result in floods but we'll jump over that mud puddle when we get to it.) last week the college community was also mourning the loss of a student who passed away from meningitis. though i did not know this student, many of my students did and were directly impacted in intense ways by her death. it was difficult to watch them struggle and i continue to hope that they are getting the support that they need. last week ended with one of our sociology majors in tears about the death of one of her cousin's. needless to say, it was a long, sad week.

i still find myself in a funk, even though this week is already going better. the sun is shining today, i had a fun weekend catching up with my parents and some great friends from high school, and i get to leave for a conference/vacation in a few days. maybe i'm stressed because i have a lot to do before the trip or just tired of being sick (i've had a cold for the last two weeks). or maybe it's a longing for winter to be over and to get a break from this insane semester. or possibility trying to figure out what my next life move will be. basically, there's a lot going on in the world of kate and much of it is conducive to gray hair making.

luckily i have two silver linings (that seems ironic somehow.) one is that i get to do a lot of traveling in the next month. i will be gone every weekend until mid-april. i'm excited about that, though i anticipate it will mean late nights trying to get class stuff done during the week. the other is that even though i'm getting more and more gray hairs, i'm about to leave to go get my hair done, so they will be undetectable. at least for a while. :D