Today was the last day of classes for the first semester of the year. Can you hear me heaving a sigh of relief?
This year was crazy, but went rather well, considering that the number of students that I directly teach tripled from last year. I was scared to give assignments, as that automatically meant hundreds of assignments to crit, troubleshoot, evaluate, mark, and potentially deal with.
One of my students commented earlier this week on how us teachers have it easy. I had to hold myself back from guffawing out loud in his face.
There’s still final semester assignments to mark, which is going to suck up the next week, but after that we’ve got a couple of weeks to relax, reconnect with friends and loved ones, and enjoy the season before it’s back to the books in January. I for one am looking forward to putting some juice back into these rather anemic batteries.
I enjoy this, but I look at teachers who have been teaching for fifteen or twenty years, and I marvel at how they manage to avoid burnout, while still being enthusiastic, passionate teachers. It really is mind-boggling.
‘I see nobody on the road,’ said Alice.
‘I only wish I had such eyes,’ the king remarked in a fretful tone. ‘To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too!
Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people by this light.’
