Whew!

This week was exhausting! I knew it would be a tough transition from summer days spent reading novels and watching movies to school days spent teaching, going to class, and reading academic articles, but I am so much more worn out than I expected to be! I really thought that I would have some free time at school this week when I might get bored. That sure didn't happen! I even had a couple of little projects that I'd set aside to do during the down time, but I never got to them. I guess I can say that this semester, we hit the ground running.

Thursday was a really tough day--we got to school around 8:30, and I felt like I worked and ran errands on campus all day, but I still didn't get everything done. In fact, it was 9pm and I was still re-reading the short story I had assigned for my 101/107 classes on Friday morning. That made me quite grouchy. I think the moral of the story is that I need to devise a new system of time management to make sure I'm able to get things done by the time they need to be done (and save the nights of working till 9pm for the end of the semester when things will be really crazy!). I think the main difference is that all last year I taught starting at 1pm, which essentially allowed me to do the majority of my prep work on M, W, F mornings. That also left T, Th, and the weekends for me to focus on the classes I was taking. Now, I teach at 9, which is great because I'm done by 11, but it messes with my division of work(teaching) and school. I assume that once I figure out a new schedule of when to focus on what, I'll feel better. It just didn't happen this week!

But, the good news is that Mark and I both survived it. He's stayed caught up on his HW and reading, which has been more demanding than previous semesters. I've managed to (even if just barely) finish reading etc. for my classes so far (getting caught up this weekend, I hope). And, we've still made it out for our walk 3 nights this week. Putting it that way, I think it sounds like everything's going fine. This weekend, we've got departmental parties (mine tonight, Mark's tomorrow), so those should be fun.

One final note for those of you living in cooler climes: today's forecasted high in Tucson is 107. Yep; and that's about 10 degrees above average. We're really ready for it to cool off!