Holiday Fever

I can't wait to be home for Thanksgiving, and we've started getting into the Christmas spirit early, too. About a week ago, I started listening to Christmas music (thanks to a rediscovery of Pandora). The city of Bowling Green has started celebrating, too. Last night was the community tree lighting ceremony, and this morning was a holiday parade. We didn't actually go to either (although we thought about it...). Instead, we decorated our own trees at home last night. Mark played Christmas music from his iPod (using the receiver Mark's parents got us when we moved). We had to find new places for our decorations, but everything looks great. It seemed worth it to decorate a bit early since we'll be out of town quite a bit this holiday season. I realized last night that the real fall weather seems to help me feel ready for the holidays. In Tucson, it always seemed like they snuck up on me. Not this year! I'm really excited to head home and see all the family. Plus, I'm having serious food cravings, often centered around green chile.

Other than looking forward to the holidays, I've been planning ahead for the end of the semester. At this point, I'm really starting to feel a difference between my former life as a teacher AND student and life as a full-time teacher. It's a relief to be only worrying about how to get all the final assignments graded on time without having to worry about writing my own final papers. In fact, although I've been strategizing a lot about how to get everything done before leaving town for Thanksgiving, I find myself with more free time today than I've had on this weekend in ages. I've also discovered that I dislike the lack of control that sometimes comes with teaching. For example, I wanted to have a set of essays I collected last week graded and returned before the break. I planned time in my schedule to make that happen. But I have a handful of students who haven't turned their essays in, which means I can't finish my to-do list! I've realized that I have to learn to let things like this go. I can certainly finish the ones I have, return those, and not feel pressure about the others. They made the choice to turn it in late, so they can wait longer to get it back.

Perhaps I should mention that I'm still really enjoying my job and my wonderful colleagues. I do have some great students, and I feel like I have learned a lot from teaching these classes so far. (I've got a list going about what I can do differently next time, too :-). It is so helpful to be able to ask the other instructors questions and share ideas. It's amazing that this semester is almost over, and while I welcome the break, I keep thinking about how much I want to continue to work here next year. With the uncertainty about that, I almost hate to be counting down the days...