Grumpy Week

Though I am feeling a wee bit better this evening, I have been experiencing my fair share of grumpiness as of late. A lot of it boils down to the fact that I have to start radiation next week and (1) this happens everyday so my schedule is about to get crazy with coming and going to the hospital everyday at 3 PM and (2) I am nervous about how this will affect my overall tiredness (which is already lagging). And then to complicate matters, my skin (esp. my face) is just having so many problems with breakouts (right now my neck and upper back). My hair looks better since it got cut to almost nothing but it's thin and doing nothing for me. I can't color my hair right now so I have more gray than I feel comfortable with. Boo.

And it's not just about cancer. We also have grumpiness in terms of this thing I call "work"! I am not sure how this happened, but all of a sudden I find myself mired in deep stacks of student papers. During the conference in Kansas City this past weekend and the first two days of this week, I have worked as diligently as I can to respond and comment on papers (which, for me, takes about 20-30 minutes per essay). Late this afternoon, I finished the last one so I think -- saying this in a whisper -- that I might be FINALLY caught up until Friday (when my ENG 101-ers turn in a stack). Most of the time, I love my job but sometimes I realize how much extra work a person has when one works as an English teacher. Do people realize how much time that teachers (who care) spend commenting and trying to elicit better revisions?! Do my students?!

And then there is the Honors Program that I coordinate at the Sam Wolf Granite City Campus. The conference I went to was all about this program but I walked away from the conference realizing that we need to make some big changes to make our struggling, little program really work. I have a meeting with my dean on Thursday afternoon and I don't think this meeting is going to go well. I need to be able to offer students something that will entice them to join and stay in the program (i.e. tuition break). I know this is like asking for a pie in the sky but I am tired of trying to coordinate a "dying" program. So ... we will see what happens.

See! Told you all that I was grumpy! :D