Drained

I am exhausted.  I knew this week would be draining, as I prepared for the upcoming semester, worked my last days at my research job, finished up some statistics freelance work, and dealt with medical stuff.  It was just a lot to deal with in one week.  So I’ve been practicing TLC since I got home from work.  I heated up comfort food for dinner (pasty — it’s a Michigan thing), and I have homemade applesauce cooling on the stove.  Yum!  I plan to curl up in a blanket now and watch a DVD.  And this weekend is all about getting things organized to make my life as easy as possible as I start teaching.

Teaching Thursdays #46

As of this morning, I have 126 students registered for my classes this fall and one more waiting for her override to get into the system.  And enrollment only goes up as we head into the first days of the semester.

127+ students!

*falls over*

More tests

So, my end of summer medical appointments are trickling into fall, which displeases me.  These were supposed to be “Hi!  Bye!  See you in 2008!” kind of visits.

I had lung function testing last week and there was just enough of a downward trend that, coupled with some other medical problems I have, prompted some renewed concern about my lungs.  So, the doctor recommended that I have imaging studies done of the inside of my lungs, just to be safe.  So I’ll go for a high resolution CT scan of my lungs tomorrow.  I may come out of that test glowing from all the radiation.  I’ll see my pulmonologist on September 7th to get results.

Preparing to Exit

I had my exit interview at my research job this morning.  (My last day is Friday.)  I’ve been busily cleaning out my desk and finding all sorts of treasures and remnants of projects that I did three or four years ago, some of which sparked great memories and some of which made me cringe!  (Don’t even get me started on how much I hated doing Java programming!!!)

I got this research job at just the right time, when I was a starving graduate student and needed a job with good benefits and needed some stability with my income.  It was the perfect fit.  And I’ve told the story many times about how when I walked into the interview for this job, I had this overwhelming feeling that I was exactly where I supposed to be at that moment.  I can’t believe I’ve been there four years now!  It went so fast.  And I’ve gotten to sit in on PhD courses (which took the mystique out of them!), participate in huge projects, and do all sorts of things that led to great learning and opportunities.

So, I’m excited to teach full-time this fall and looking forward to hopefully being in grad school next fall, but I definitely have bittersweet feelings about leaving this job that was my first “real” job.

Beware the Random Category

You know how they say that you should never, ever have a junk drawer or a miscellaneous folder in your file cabinet?  If you do, everything ends up in there.  I think the same should be said for a “Random” blog post category.  Yes, I have one.  But I’m not proud of it!  *grin*

I love blog post categories.  Love em, love em, love em!  They are the best blog invention ever.  I am a bit of an organization freak though, and I love to sort things.  But, outside of my own loopiness, it is nice to have the categories to help you find your way around if you jump into another person’s blog mid-life.  I particularly like to read medical patient and pregnancy blogs, and if you jump in midway though, you kind of want to know the beginning of the story.  And rather than sift through the posts in backwards chronological order, it’s easier to just click the ”medical” or “pregnancy” category, and voila, you get a much more manageable list of posts to read through.

Anyway, where was I going with this?  Oh, the random category.  So, I think I started with about eight categories, which grew and grew and included the infamous Random category.  Too many of my posts that are actually about me and my life were going into Random, so I just now added a “just regular life” category and re-sorted things.

Just thought I’d share that.

A new neighbor

A little over a year ago, a married couple moved into the apartment next to me, which had been vacant for about six months.  Our apartments are fairly soundproof (that is, I don’t hear them when we’re both in our apartments with closed doors), but the noise from the common area outside our neighboring doors can be quite loud.  And they created a lot of noise as they were coming and going!  They would come home late at night and talk and laugh loudly all the way up the stairs.  Then they’d forget that they need to hang on to their door as it closes, and they’d let it go and it would slam shut (as fire doors are supposed to do).  On occasions when the man came home late and found the door chained shut, he’d knock and knock and plead with his wife to let him in and then laugh when she’d just talk back at him through the door.  Cute!  But a little annoying at 12:30 a.m.

A couple of months ago, their noise completely stopped.  No slamming doors, no chattering, no coming in and out late at night.  In fact, when the man comes home, he gently taps at the door.  I figured someone had complained, or maybe they realized by hearing others that any loud noise made in the common area is disturbing.  In any event, I was pleased by the lack of disruption late at night.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, I saw the reason for the change.  They have a baby!  Surprise!  I never saw the woman enough to notice she was expecting.  But, I bet they realized incredibly quickly that babies don’t like slamming doors!  Thanks Baby. 

Haircuts, movies, and lungs. Oh my?

I have not had the best week.  My teaching schedule was changed (still four classes but a much harder set of them), and my pulmonology visit on Thursday led to scheduling more tests and another appointment.  Bah humbug.  But, I found myself dancing to the music on the Weather Channel last evening (*laughs*), so life isn’t all bad.

Some highlights of the week:

I went for a haircut yesterday, which might not seem newsworthy except that the last (and, in fact, only) time I’ve had my hair cut at a salon was in 1986.  I’ve probably had about 200 haircuts in my lifetime, and all but one of them were done by my aunt, who has now moved far, far away.  She cut my hair in late June, and it was getting unsightly now, so I bit the bullet and went to the hair salon at the mall.  They offer inexpensive haircuts, and they have good ventilation so my lungs wouldn’t freak out from the chemicals.  And that actually worked out OK, which was a huge relief!  I had a hard time expressing how I wanted my hair cut (since I never had to explain it before!), but the hairdresser just followed my aunt’s cut and made it shorter.  It was interesting watching my hair being cut in the mirror (that was a new experience!).  Of course, I could barely see anything without my glasses on, but still.  And the end result looks like my aunt cut it, which pleases me to no end.  So hooray for the mall salon!

Another highlight of the week was seeing two really good movies — one at the theater, one on DVD from my beloved library.  The movies are “Becoming Jane” (about Jane Austen’s life) and “Miss Potter” (about Beatrix Potter’s life).  I highly recommend them.

I got a bunch of teaching supplies in the mail this week!  Some of the stuff was free samples from the vendors at the conference I went to, and some of it was stuff I had ordered.  I was so tempted to just sit on my floor and play with everything last evening!

Teaching Thursdays #45

Someone found my blog the other day by searching for “first day of teaching, want to quit.”  I’d like to think it was someone doing research on the teaching profession, but given the timing, I have a feeling it was someone who finished their first day of teaching and didn’t want to go back.  I wanted so much to give that person a hug!  But that’s hard to do over the internet, especially if you have no clue who they are.  So instead, I decided to write them a letter.

Dear First Day,

It sounds like you might have had an overwhelming first day.  *hugs*  Last fall, I was talking to one of my cousins who had just started teaching in California, and one of the first things I said to her was that she’d probably want to quit (and I mean seriously Want to Quit, not just having a bad day) at least three times in her first year.  That seems to be pretty universal among teachers at all levels in that first year.  I wanted her to know, and I want you to know, that that’s totally normal.

And you know, I wasn’t surprised that someone would want to quit teaching on the very first day.  First days at a lot of jobs are overwhelming, but at least in most places, you can ease into it a little and not get slammed with everything all at once.  But you know, teaching actually doesn’t work that way, does it?  You do get slammed with everything, put into a classroom, and expected to be totally competent on the first day!  And you have no clue what you are doing!  And nobody is there to help you in your class.  What a crazy job.  You have 25 or 30 (or maybe even more) kids or teenagers (yikes!) or adults looking at you, and if you give a hint that you are unsure what you’re doing, some of them will see right through that and make things as hard as possible for you.

This is all sounding a little bleak, but I just want to say that the first day (well, days…well, the first whole year) of teaching can be rough.  Everyone who has ever taught knows that, so if you say something to your colleagues, you’ll get nods of sympathy and probably some kind ears to listen to you.  Take advantage of that because it helps to talk out the stress with people who get it.  And, there will be good days!  When you see that you’ve made a difference to someone, those are always good days.  When you catch up on a pile of grading, that will make you feel good.  And I promise you with every ounce of my being that the second year is better.  Even if you end up teaching a whole bunch of different stuff, you know the flow of the year and when to send out SOS signals for help, and the time it takes to plan lessons gets less, and you kind of know what you are doing.  Like anything you do, you get better at it with practice and experience and you probably won’t want to quit on the first day next year.

So, hang in there and do your best and know that everything doesn’t have to be perfect.  And rely on your colleagues, especially the ones who are passionate about this work, because it is a great job to fall in love with.

Me

Losing a doctor

I crammed most of my summer medical appointments into these last two weeks of August, which has made for a mostly doctor-free summer!  But, now the appointments are rolling around.

I saw my hematologist this morning for routine follow up of my blood platelet/bleeding disorder.  We caught up on the latest info from NIH (still waiting on platelet tests being done on my blood in Europe — from blood sent a year ago!).  And we talked about my symptoms, which have mostly been odd “spells” of bleeding but nothing huge going on.  My blood counts have been reasonably OK.  All good news!  I even had the courage to ask the doc a weird question about why my experience of my foot “falling asleep” has completely changed since I’ve been treated for a bleeding disorder.  He said he really doesn’t know but it’s an interesting question!  I told him that I had a dream that he kicked me out of his office for asking weird questions, so I was glad he didn’t just brush it off or kick me out!

And then at the end of this good news, lighthearted visit, he told me he’s leaving the practice at the end of the year.  Those of you who know how important it is to have a good medical team that works well with you and works well together know how hard it is to lose a piece of that team.  And this doctor has been great for me.  He wants to see me one more time and will then officially hand over my care to a relatively new doctor in the practice (who actually was part of my care at a couple of visits when he was a resident).  I think this new doctor will work out fine — he’s a good listener and very thorough – but I will miss the doctor who orchestrated the steps that calmed my bleeding down and who recently took the time to contact the NIH himself to get answers about these long-awaited test results.  He is a good doctor.

Summer is Over

I have to declare summer over now because I really, really need to start getting ready for fall.  And if I started getting ready for fall when I thought it was actually still summer, I might whine a lot.  So by declaration of me (at least in my life…to each her own), It Is Now Fall 2007.  BONG!

So, I made a “to do” list.  (I am a queen of listmakers, so if you ever need a list made, just call me!)  My new list is kind of scary.  It’s quite possible that it would take three of me to accomplish it all.  But the joy of checking things off my “to do” list is one of my main motivators, so we’ll see.  I do like to Get. Things. Done.

By the way, and this is totally random, but do any of you know what the plural of hypotenuse is?  Current contenders are hypoteneese or hypotenai.