scijessreads

Fall 2023 is shaping up to be a semester where I will be happy if I manage not to collapse in exhaustion. Nothing is really going wrong, there is just A LOT to deal with that has nothing to do with my actual teaching responsibilities. Or at least, not directly.

Part of the issue is that we just switched textbooks and resources for both classes I teach, which means getting used to new systems and prepping new material. Which takes time. So I feel like I am finishing up things just before we get to them in class. I haven’t really had to do that since my first year teaching. It’s a bit more stressful than the average day-to-day.

Another thing making things more eventful is that I am putting in for promotion, which means finding all sorts of paperwork and making a portfolio and doing all of that on top of the normal things I need to do. At least that gets turned in next month…

The third thing is that I am not sure I have really had a chance to process the loss of my cat and my grandfather, which both happened basically on the same day, which was also the first day of classes. Ugh. I kinda just plowed through the last few weeks, but I think the emotional changes are finally getting to me and manifesting in my exhaustion and overall tiredness. I am not sure how to resolve any of it, and am taking it all one day at a time so as not to completely unravel at the moment.

I love my job. I love what I do. But sometimes that isn’t enough to get through all of the external things that want to steal away your time and sanity. And this is one of those posts where I just needed to get out everything in an attempt to put a name to it and maybe deal with it a little bit better.

Most of my emotional processing happens internally, without a lot of external cues that even indicate what is happening. My friend even said (when I called about my cat) that I am much more emotionally stable and not prone to hysterics compared to others. I never have been overly demonstrative. It takes a lot for me to cry (unless it’s a particularly good book, then the tears come a little more easily). I think to a degree I am good at compartmentalizing things, to keep the different areas of my life separate from each other. I do find that writing things down tends to help, whether it be a journal or something like this. Even if I write it and then delete it, the act of writing it down helps.

So maybe that’s what this is. My attempt to deal with all of the things I’m juggling right now. We’ll see if it works. Or maybe I really do need to think about finding a therapist…