learn to love my job

It took me 8 years to get here and except for the travel, it’s not that bad… plus the money is really great and allows me to live the life I want to. Besides I actually can’t think of anything else I’d rather do instead…

Perhaps one way to get by would be in times like this reflect on what I have gained in actual knowledge from the job for myself, as opposed to whatever anyone else is getting out of it. And by “knowledge” I don’t mean psychological or self-help kind of concepts either; I mean actual knowledge that I can use in my own research. Even if I don’t teach anyone anything, I can learn some things that I can use in other ways.

None of this means I have to love it, either.

I’m giving it four years.

ironically, since it is the last day of classes.

Maybe I’m just tired.

Maybe I should give this goal up and just do the damned job. :’(

I really dislike this one class. I don’t dislike the individual students, but I really don’t like the overall dynamic. Two more weeks of that (and everything else).

I’m still giving this job four years. If I’m not significantly happier by then I’m going to start looking around.

I enjoy myself. And when they fail, as inevitably some of them do, I don’t immediately think it’s a reflection on what a bad job I’m doing.

I even thought of a new grad course that I would like to teach next year. It might be a good idea for me to stick to song courses some since it is easier to handle the material than with opera courses.

Oog, I think my Verdi seminar is going to be mighty big this spring.

I still have a pile of grading today and I woke up with laryngitis. I can tell that I can’t lecture. I called my mom to see how I sounded when I spoke and she told me right away she didn’t think my voice would last. Just talking to her for two minutes really took a toll on my voice.

I feel kind of stupid not being able to speak and having to cancel classes because of it. Also, this will put me behind in a number of ways that I will have to think about. But on the plus side I can put a lot of time in today finishing up the grading.

I wish I could keep up with this job. I would like it better if I weren’t so exhausted by it so much of the time.

Class tomorrow, unprepared (although I have a vague idea of something) I just got home from rehearsal (it’s 11:00 pm) and I think I’ll be up all night. The other two classes are fine, but I can’t seem to keep everything going every week. I fear that I am not very good at this, although I know that once I actually start repeating some classes it will be better . . .

At least I don’t feel like everything is bad; just this one class. The worse problem is that no one talks in this class. I talked to a colleague today and told him who was in the class. “Yes,” he said, “those are all really quiet kids. You are just going to have to resign yourself to lecturing.” That’s easy to do when you meet a couple of times a week, but a two hour class once a week is difficult to run via unadulterated lectures. But he’s right in a way; I can’t depend on them to engage very much at all.

Argh.

I felt really unprepared and exhausted this morning (I had a rehearsal last night, after which I really, really hurt and couldn’t work very well). I had a hard time getting out of bed; that old feeling of wanting to hide, or call in, or fake an injury, or anything to get out of facing my class came over me.

But I didn’t do any of that. I got in later than I wanted (after 8:00) and threw together my syllabus and notes, neither of which I had finished. My notes were extremely sketchy and disorganized. My syllabus is sketchy, although not disorganized. I have to flesh out a few things and give them a revised version.

But the best thing is that, although my notes were rather a mess, I had thought so much about this topic for so long (that was part of the problem with my notes, actually; too much material) that my presentation was actually pretty good. Also, I made the excellent decision to have them generate the outline of the course background (it is a seminar, after all). So for the first hour I slowly went through the big aesthetic issues, definitive features of romanticism in the mid 18th century, poetric trends, changes in social context of music-making etc. and then after the break I effectively had them regurgitate it back to me in the form of an outline on the board. Thus the organization was generated in class as a group effort rather than on my notes ahead of time. I think that the organization was actually latent in the notes but we broke it down to first principles, or something like that.

As usual, I felt like I was going to be sick ahead of time, and was just totally miserable. But I enjoyed myself in class.

I’d be happy if I could skip that first step. I call it my “freak-out” time, and I always make sure that I have plenty of time the night before and that day in which to freak out. But I would be happier if I could just forego it altogether.

I feel sick :).

to the ever popular “do first things first.” Still very hard to concentrate today, but I did a little better and the day is hardly over.

If I were able to work regularly, not hampered by too much anxiety getting in the way, I might start to love my job.

But I’m now facing a new obstacle, and it is clear I am going to have to set some limits in order to survive. So, I don’t think I will able to see a certain someone on school nights, at all. At least this semester.