Semester start

Last week was the first week of classes at University of Regina. I am teaching two graduate classes – one first year masters, and one first and second year PhD. Teaching graduate students is easier and harder – harder because the material is more complicated and I have to be thinking more deeply, but easier because they do a lot more of the work. I feel kind of unprepared, but I’m sure it will go fine. The first week went fine. 

However, it is difficult to focus on classes when I am personally more interested in the fact that I am growing a little baby. The whole first trimester I was super tired and had a lot of nausea on and off. Now that I am solidly in the second trimester, I feel like I’ve gotten a bit of my energy back. Thank goodness I have, or I don’t know if I would be able to teach at all. 

It is a busy semester with my two classes, plus three PhD students, one MA student, and one honours student, all heavily involved in their thesis and dissertation research projects at the moment. Plus a number of students asking for reference letters already, and that number likely to increase dramatically as the weeks go on. Plus I’m doing this whole thing serving as our faculty association “equity officer,” which means lots of meetings, and lots of behind the scenes work. Plus all the rest of the stuff, all the little things that go along with having an academic job. Oh yeah, and I’m supposed to submit a grant by November 1, which I haven’t started working on at all. 

And it all seems important, but at the same time not that important. It seems more important to spend time with Maren while she is still an only child and there is time for that. It seems more important to focus on my health, and not being overly stressed. I will do a good job within the time that I have allotted for work, but I won’t work extra. I’ll do what I can, and if I do a crappy job, the bonus is that maybe people won’t ask me to do some of those things in the future. But it seems like lately that when I have more to do than I have time to do it in, I end up working more efficiently, doing enough but not more than enough, and finding that everyone else is reasonably satisfied with my performance. And prioritizing. Maybe I won’t submit that grant proposal. But regardless, I will keep in mind that my family is more important to me than my work. Always :-)