Aaaand... We're Off!

Day one of the semester was at turns frustrating, exhilarating, and exhausting.

Frustrating: I received a response to the IT request that I sent last week.  In it, the IT person wrote, and this is not a joke, “I hope that this problem is resolved now!  I closed out the request.”  This was my first communication about the request from IT.  Luckily, I had a plan B for dealing with the problem that did not magically resolve itself over the weekend – a plan B which did not, incidentally, include going to an IT training, which is a good thing, as the link to see the schedule of such trainings was broken, when I looked to see whether that was an option.

Exhilarating: Teaching!  Huzzah! Teaching my little excited majors in the one and only class that is required of each and every major (well, at least for the moment).  80 percent of which read an article before the semester began, just because I asked them to!  Who watched a pretty intense 45-minute long talk and didn’t fall asleep!  This truly is the most wonderful time of the year, with students.  They are all full of possibility and awesomeness for me.  Don’t worry: I’ll become appropriately cynical somewhere around week 5.  Oh, and also exhilarating: NOT having the schedule that I had last semester!  My Tuesdays will be positively delightful!

Exhausting: It’s all the fucking people, yo, and all the performing.  You think you remember what it feels like, and you’re not worried, but then by the end of the first day your body tells you that this shit is intense.  Never fear, I’ll be fine by week 3 – or at least used to the exhaustion.

ETA: Also, thank you Todd Akin, for giving me a way to talk about politics and the discipline of English in my class tonight from a perspective that has nothing to do with literary studies or creative writing.  Can you imagine being that guy’s speech-writer?  His press secretary?  Shit, his plain-old secretary (who probably was an English major at some point)?  Just THINK about the rhetorical challenges that any of those positions involve in the current climate. “Legitimate rape” might be the new go-to joke example for oxymoron, replacing “military intelligence.”