20140114.0739

I am in trouble.

It is only the second day of the new term, and I am already fighting running battles with my snooze button.  I am already going back and forth with the little beeping machine over whether I will get out of bed when I want to get out of bed or I will get out of bed when I want to get out of bed.  And I feel like I am losing.

Perhaps I am doing the teaching thing wrongly.  Perhaps my techniques are inefficient.  Whether they are or not, though, I found that I was emotionally and mentally drained at the end of my day yesterday, and that those drains sapped what physical resources were available to me (which are not as extensive as they have been because I have not nurtured them as I ought to have done).  Even now, I am somewhat dazed by the experience--and the first day of classes is one of the easiest teaching days.  If it left me as I am, then I very much am in trouble.

Amid the comments disparaging those in the professoriate is one used to disparage all teachers, that we get to have a lot of time off.  I have spoken to this before, and other pieces (such as this one referred to me by a former coworker) also hit upon the issue.  What they fail to acknowledge is that working with learners is exhausting (as is conducting research in any field, but that is a different matter altogether).  Guiding students through their individual learning processes takes a lot of work--and it is necessarily the case that students, rather than classes, are guided.  Each learns in his or her own way and at his or her own pace, and what students learn is not always (or even often, probably) the material being explicitly taught.

My composition classes this term have nineteen students each.  My literature class had thirty when I last looked.  Guiding sixty-eight individuals from where they currently are in their understanding to where they need to be to meet the institution-mandated course objectives and where they really need to be to have a chance at fully realizing their humanity and their connectedness to the world around them is no small task.  Many do not realize that there is such guidance to be had, or that such goals exist, let alone are achievable.  Some seek to resist learning as a thing unneeded and undesirable, and a few others unfortunately are not content with their own ruin, but seek to inflict it upon others.  My colleagues and I have to help those who want it--and they all need different help--while minimizing the impact of those who do not or who do not want them to have that help--and they all use different tactics to work their will.  It is, frankly, a lot of work to do.  And if it is the case that I do not do that work with the sweat of my brow or the strength of my back, I can nonetheless attest that it is no less tiring to move people with mind and mouth than to dig ditches in the dirt and stone.  I have done both, and more than once.

I take comfort, though, in the sure knowledge that the first day on the job is exhausting for most people, regardless of the work.  Some matters, at least, should improve soon.