Teaching Twelve Hour Days

All of my classes are on Tuesdays-Thursdays, by request -- this is a favor the chair does for me, so that I can have four-day writing blocks, from Friday through Monday. But this means I get to school before dawn in the winter, arriving, usually, at just after 6:30 a.m. It's dark and cold, and the drive to school is short enough that the car never warms up. I am shivering the whole way.

My office is overheated, though. I have to pull off my jacket and gloves and hat and the woolen jersey I wear under all this, to keep from breaking into a sweat. The office is dark, the building is silent. I say good morning to the cleaning person, who is usually emptying yesterday's trash cans at this point.

I make coffee and drink it while I watch the sun turn the trees outside my office window gold against the blue sky. This is my favorite moment of the day. It's almost worth getting up so early. Almost.

Also, is there anything better than hot coffee on a winter morning?

I spent the hours between 6:30 and 9:30 prepping for classes and maybe grading some papers. I say "grading," but I don't actually grade the essays my freshman write, not exactly. I give them feedback and assign a temporary grade -- like, this is the grade this would get if I were grading it -- and then send the paper back to them to be revised and resubmitted. 

At 9:30, I teach my first section of Comp I. Right now we are working on revision practices for their major papers. I talk a little about reverse outlines, higher order concerns v. lower order concerns, and then settle them into their "workshops" to deal with at least one problem in each of their respective papers. I wander around the room, dealing with problems that stump the workshops.

At 11:00, I do all this again with the second section of Comp II.

From 12:15 until 2:00, I eat oranges in my office and do more prep/grading. 

At 2:00, I teach my Editing class. We're working on Light v. Heavy editing right now. My most talented student is having trouble with this, since they want to go heavy on every edit. What does light editing mean? they demanded. Am I just supposed to leave errors in the manuscript? I attempt to explain, but they remain confused and frustrated. They have the right answers, how can they not share them? That sort of thing. Believe me, I understand.

At 3:15, I return home to take the dog out and check on Dr. Skull, who is at his computer even though he's supposed to be sitting with his feet elevated so his toes will heal. I grumble at him, he says he'll elevated his feet from now on, which I don't believe for one damn minute.

At 4:30, I return to school to prep for Fiction Workshop, which starts at 5:25. It's supposed to run until 8:15, but by skipping the mid-class break, I get us out by 7:30, usually. We workshop four or five stories, and talk about the reading, which this week is Jesse Stuart's "Split Cherry Tree." None of them have ever read it. Apparently no one reads Jesse Stuart anymore. None of them have even ever heard of him. They all like the story, though. I make a mental note to add Stuart to my list of stories to assign to undergraduates.

At about 8:00, I arrive home. I'm so exhausted I feel like I've been hit by sticks all day. Dr. Skull has gone to bed, usually without eating dinner. I feed the dog, I feed myself, I watch an episode of Deadwood. I lie on the couch listening to an audiobook (Connie Willis's The Doomsday Book at the moment) until I fall asleep, sometimes around midnight.

I guess that's actually a 13 hour teaching day. But it's 12 hours if we don't count the hour I spend at home yelling at Dr. Skull and dealing with the dog.

I really do prefer this schedule, due to the time it gives me to write. But my God is it a long day.