The End?

After this week, my teaching career may be at an end. I've signed up to teach a 102 section next semester, but have no real desire to do so; I think when it comes time to sign the contract that I'm going to ditch it completely. I'm six credits away from my BA in French Lit (yet another pointless humanities degree) and may simply concentrate on finishing that.

Tomorrow I'm teaching "The Mystery of Zen" by Gilbert Highet in 102. He discusses in detail Zen in the Art of Archery and tries to explain for the Western audience what Zen and Buddhism are all about. I always take in lots of religious images and statues and altar objects I've collected in my travels and do a sort of whirlwind tour of spirituality before the essay discussion. At the end of class I'll make them read and interpret some Zen koans for fun. After that, it's caput! My 263 class has student presentations scheduled until the end of the semester, and in 102 we're doing bullshit conferences and maybe one more lecture.

Of course, as the lecturing responsibilities lessen, the correcting/grading responsibilities get insane.

I'm pooped. This working until 10pm, teaching at 8am stuff is for the birds! WTF was I thinking? I'm not 25 anymore (wow, an acknowledgment that I'm getting old and perhaps can't do 15 hour days with impunity!). Taking a 400-level French class on top of it all has added to the burden. I'm wiped out, and can't wait for the break (and the huge shifting project I've been given at Cook to make up for a certain employee's inability to do her job--I even get to hire students to help).

Thursday I came back from break to find two written messages from M. and one voice mail. She was waiting to present my probationary release review (sounds dreadful), and had stayed an hour late to catch me after dinner (had I known this was about to happen, I would've taken my break earlier). It went very well, and was surprisingly flattering, given that I spend much of my time here doing what I'm doing right now--'blogging. But the last two weeks have been rather busy with lots of needy kids and lots of cataloging and lots of ordering and I actually today felt harried at the Library because of ILL and some other small crises erupting all at once with faculty whose orders have yet to arrive.

M. thanked me for the ability to get along with everyone after I acknowledged there was at times a troubling negativity downstairs. She really wanted to know if I was happy in the job, and I assured her in the vaguest terms possible that I was. I'm not, really, but I don't hate the job, I'm simply not challenged by it, and the schedule is shit but I hate it because I teach in the morning more than for the 10pm thing, which would be fine if I could sleep in, and next semester I'll be able to do so. I don't even mind working Sundays because I would just waste the day watching football and/or DVDs anyhow. At least here I work--ie read.

I applied for a Writer/Editor position here on campus. I saw it in the Sun Classifieds and thought "Why the fuck not?" The pay is 10k more, and it's more in line with my interests, and the hours are M-F with the same benefits.

Under Requirements, however, there's a need for "successful electronic publishing experience." Um, yeah, well, I uh get 30 hits a day on my 'blog, and my Google ads pay for my Earthlink service. Probably won't count. I have no chance of getting this job, because only a very loose interpretation of ENGL102 teaching would fit into their "3 years editing or equivalent experience." Still worth a shot.