Wedged

All this week I’ve felt wedged, smashed, or sandwiched between Then and Now, the Done and the Yet-To-Do.

Last week, I was teaching one writing class for SNHU Online; this week, that one class has ended, and I’m teaching in its stead two online lit classes. This is, of course, on top of the four writing and lit classes I’m teaching at Keene State and the one lit class I’m teaching online for Granite State College: not simply an overload, but a double-load. This is, I remind myself, how I as an adjunct instructor pay the bills, save money for summer, and harbor some hope of someday retiring from a handful of jobs that don’t provide health insurance much less retirement benefits. When you’re in the midst of a Semester Smashup, it’s important to remember the “why” behind all the multitasking.

One result of piggybacking classes at several institutions is the calendrical chaos that ensues. On Monday, I was simultaneously grading midterms and commenting on research paper drafts for my students at Keene State and grading final exams and calculating final grades for my SNHU Online students. Left untouched in the midterm/end-term madness were weekly response papers from Granite State students; on hold were my new online lit students who were facing the usual back-to-(online)-school jitters and thus had more questions than normal about course requirements, schedule details, and workload overwhelm.

In other words, Thank God It’s Saturday and I survived the week.

An over-loaded semester is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I like the extra money that’s coming in: fall is when I buy the things I wanted over the summer but couldn’t afford…or when I pay off the credit cards I used for the things that couldn’t wait. And given a choice between Too Busy and Not Busy Enough, I’ll always choose the former over the latter. Growing up in a working-class family, I was bred to believe that hard work is good for you: it keeps you out of trouble, and it makes you honest. When I come home from a marathon on-campus teaching day or click “Submit” on another batch of online papers, I feel an unmistakable sense of accomplishment. I’m pulling my weight and paying my way. No free lunches for me.

It’s true, though, that when I’m busy with teaching tasks, I’m much less likely to write…and when I do write during an overloaded semester, what I manage to produce feels dull and formulaic, like I’m churning out Literary Product just as mechanically as I churn out grades and student feedback. Whether I’m feeding ungraded papers into the Mental Machine or the matter of my days, it feels like what I do with that stuff is entirely automatic. In the case of student papers, I read it, mark it, and move on; in the case of life-matter, I snap it, write it, then post it. There’s nothing magical in any of this: heaven knows the last time I saw anything remotely resembling a Muse. Who has time for a Muse when you’re teaching an overload, have both a dog and a blog to feed, and want to get an occasional full night’s sleep?

On Thursday morning, only six students came to my 8 am Expository Writing class: only six! Cleaning crews had used a solvent to clean our computer classroom’s dry-erase board, so the place reeked of chemicals; it didn’t take many quickly dying brain cells to decide to scrap the day’s lesson plans and relocate to the student center, where we spent our scheduled class time doing an essay read-around.

My students get to workshop one another’s papers on a weekly basis, and I read them as often en masse…but I couldn’t remember the last time I had the luxury of sitting with only a handful of students–not the usual 20–to hear them read and talk about one another’s work. Maybe I was strung-out from too much Halloween candy or simply exhausted from the usual Marathon Thursday drill, but it felt downright heavenly to just sit still with a handful of students who themselves were just barely healthy and awake enough to drag themselves to class.  What a difference it made to experience each of their essays as the work of a living, breathing person rather than another piece on the Paper Pile.

At this time of the semester, it’s easy to forget why you’re burning the candle at every conceivable end…and that applies to students as well as overloaded instructors. When my students, face-to-face and online alike, approach me with the usual excuses–I’m sick, my car broke down, my baby was up all night screaming–I can nod my head, “Yes, yes, I feel your pain” even if I can’t related to the particulars. At this time of the semester, we’re all feeling wedged, smashed, or sandwiched by the various conflicting demands on our days; there isn’t enough time for any of us. And perhaps only an overloaded adjunct instructor can understand a student’s workload overwhelm to the marrow of her bones.

If you enjoyed today’s tree pictures, you should click over to this month’s double-stuffed Festival of the Trees, which features Trees of Halloween and Trees and Fruit of Autumn. Enjoy!