Epizeudy Boogie-Woogie

When I think about the rhythm of my existence, the words “West Coast freestyle” cross my mind, as does a brief Lambadic beat, but ultimately I have to admit the cadence of my life is most aptly labeled “semesterlyish.”

Back when I was in college, during the “who’ll-shove-Alexis-Carrington-into-a-fountain-this-week?” decade of the ’80s, I attended an institution that paced itself by trimesters, each lasting ten weeks. Pretty much, that meant we all felt pregnant for four years, except at the end the only things we expelled from our bodies were plumes of smoke from Camel Lights and fountains of vomit from 3.2 beer.

Later, when I started teaching at the University of Idaho and then the University of Colorado, I made the switch to a sixteen-week schedule. Damn near wore me out, that business. Because seriously, when I was an undergraduate, the mere ten-week schedule was hectic enough, with me juggling absences in my various classes just into that tenth week before each professor started to realize I was actually enrolled in her course. Yup, right about final exam time, I faced down raised eyebrows and questioning looks when I dared to enter the classrooms of the courses I’d been enrolled in for two-and-a-half months. My defense, when the professor stuttered to ask me if I wasn’t perhaps in the wrong room, was to glare and act affronted that my constant and active presence had never before registered with that poor, confused professor, even though my only constant activity had actually taken place downtown at the bar.

So you can imagine what those later jobs oriented around sixteen strung-out weeks did to my sense of internal scheduling, particularly because I was the instructor, the one in charge, the one who had to be there, like, nearly every time we had class. Crikey, but that was a whole lot of showing up to do. Fortunately, the beauty of “group work” soon shone its face upon me, and I realized that, so long as I got my carcass into the classroom, I could set them on each other before kicking back for the duration, hefting my feet onto the table and peering under the podium on the off chance that some other instructor had left behind an Entertainment Weekly.

Oh, all right, Matlock. Occasionally I’d address words to the room full of students and make some marks on their papers and do a little jollying along. But, really, sixteen whole weeks of anything is ex-haus-ting, sugar. (Hearty Huzzahs, then, to Da Groomeo, who’s kept me on board for nearly nine years now. I stay ’cause he keeps hiding the Nutella.)

Yea, sixteen weeks whups me. But even the ten-week trimester back in the shoulder-pad years highlighted what a fragile and delicate violet is The Jocelyn Who Sways at the Slightest Breeze: at the end of every term, without fail, I’d push through those final exams (introducing myself to the teacher as I exited the room that last time) and, just as I started packing a bag and heading for the airport to grab a flight back to the Homeland, I’d

suddenly

get

swelly-ish tonsils

and a fever.

Indeed, once the push to the end of term was over, my immune system collapsed and invited every random microbe roaming the quad after the previous night’s kegger to enter my nostrils for a gnarly in-head continuation of the party. Thus, “end-of-term” always translated to “buy-Theraflu-in-bulk.”

Even when I started teaching on that even-more-wearying-sixteen-week-rhythm, I was sure this tendency towards end-of-term illness was simply a Student Syndrome. After all, hadn’t I seen how easy it was to be a teacher, how simple it could be to pretend to be engaged in my work? What could possibly be sick-making about filing my nails and pouting out twelve times a week to the tuition-paying kiddles, “No, Jerome, accept is not spelled e-x-c-e-p-t“?

Strangely, though, the sixteen-week semester, under which I still teach, is far-reaching enough to make everyone in the classroom sick. Sure, we’re all sick of each other by about Week 11, but who knew physical sickness would continue to set in at the end of every semester for me, even with the eight-foot buffer I like to call the “No Steppie Here, Tiffany” zone, an eight-foot buffer that happens to exist right in front of the instructorial magic carpet of desk?

It’s like all those students actually do come up to ask questions; it’s like I actually do circulate the room and look over shoulders, making suggestions. It’s like all those gettin’-sick students get me sick, too. It’s like there’s just as much stress for the teacher at the end of term as there is for the rarely-attending students who are frantically trying to get up to speed after multiple absences (“Um, hi. Are you in this class? What’s that? Your name is on the roster? Tiffany, is it? Sure it’s not Jocelyn? At any rate, welcome to the final exam!”).

It’s like, right now, as I type this, we’re heading into final exams on campus. It’s like I’ve been hacking, dripping, and snerfling into the keyboard as I type and consider the 50 research papers, 40 Novels finals, and 20 English Lit exams I have to mark in the next week, before I start to chip away at prepping my summer classes.

It’s like, my external rhythm may be set at semesterlyish, but my internal rhythm innately functions on a six-week bee-bop. On a six-week calendar, by the time anyone even thinks about coming to class…or getting hostile about a grade…or coughing in the No Steppie zone and turning the instructor into some wan Charles-Dickens-orphling-looking thing…

we are out of there

textbooks tossed into the bonfire,

cars idling in the Wendy’s drive-thru as we await the deliverance of the restorative semi-frozen bev-cream known as The Frosty,

hands beating out a highly-personalized staccato tattoo onto the steering wheel as we wait.

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22 responses to “Epizeudy Boogie-Woogie”

  1. chelle Avatar
    chelle

    hehe I so love your writings about teaching.

  2. flutter Avatar
    flutter

    You kill me.

    I cannot tell you how many times my humanities prof would yell out “squibbilty bibblety!” in the middle of lecture, just to see if we were paying attention

  3. lime Avatar
    lime

    i feel your pain. i empathize, there is just one thing that disturbs me greatly.

    you…
    assign…
    group….
    projects?????

    what kinda psychic sister are you anyway?

    breathes deeply to inhale the good, the calming….exhales fully to expel the poison…aahhhh. all better. i still love ya.

    (and i now feel the need to organize a study about the prevalence of nutella addiction among literary oriented redheads….my oldest, a redhead, wants to major in english and can snarf down an industrial sized jar of nutella inside of 24 hours when given the chance)

    passing the purell so yo are stocked up and ready to go for summer classes.

  4. furiousBall Avatar
    furiousBall

    i’ve been teaching my coworkers how to hand fart. i don’t think they spell accept correctly either

  5. pistols at dawn Avatar
    pistols at dawn

    You should start literally teaching from an Ivory soap tower. Germs hate ivory.

  6. Claire Avatar
    Claire

    Mmm… nutella! Love it.
    My son who is in an OR college just called and said, “Mom, my throat is sore and I’m coughing. What should I take?” Then proceeded to let me in on the stress of spring football, papers due and looming finals. My poor 250pound baby. I made him some banana bread and shipped it off right away.
    btw -I swear by Airborn, cuz I get snarfed on All The Time at school by my special ed students.

  7. Optimist Avatar
    Optimist

    How do you have time to blog? 🙂

    Enjoy that Frosty – you deserve it.

    xoxo

  8. Jazz Avatar
    Jazz

    Not being a teacher,I think it sure as hell beats the 47 or so week schedules I’m on.

  9. urban-urchin Avatar
    urban-urchin

    I cry a little now at the end of school, I will have two children to entertain and I am scrambling with one.

    I too get sick at the end of stressful events which means that I was sick every vacation during college.

    I think the ciggies and excessive alcohol consumption didn’t help either.

  10. Say It Avatar
    Say It

    You could just set up a big picture of you at the podium with instructions for the students for the last couple weeks of class.

    Feel better, remember your puffs plus and hand sanatizer.

  11. Diana Avatar
    Diana

    Hah. See, this is what you get from actually leaving the No Steppie, Tiffany, Zone and entering the classroom proper.

    Your own fault for ‘interacting’ and ‘teaching’ and all those things most hardened instructors know better than to risk.

    Maybe a hazmat suit? I’m sure you could either write a grant proposal or get administration to pony up.

  12. liv Avatar
    liv

    i had an algebra prof from Nigeria who would occasionally look at me and say, “Livia, it seems you have got Georgia peaches on your mind.”

  13. Let's Pretend Avatar
    Let’s Pretend

    You should give out extra credit for anyone that can detail what you were wearing each time class was held.

    I once had an 8am class that I could never make it to. At the end of the semester the teacher told me that she would have failed me accept (ha ha) I made the highest grade on her final. Hmm what does that say about her teaching skills???

  14. cathy Avatar
    cathy

    The trick is to get real close to sick kids during term so by the time the holidays come around you are immune to everything.

  15. Glamourpuss Avatar
    Glamourpuss

    God yes, Same here – I always spent the first week of the hols in bed feeling crappy. And so much work to do at the ned of term when one is exhausted. I don’t miss that. But the holidays – the sixteen weeks off a year? Yeah, I miss that.

    Puss

  16. Claudia Avatar
    Claudia

    Oh GOD! Dynasty! That show was the BOMB! Shoulder pads! Manicures! Girl fights! SEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  17. kimber the wolfgrrrl Avatar
    kimber the wolfgrrrl

    At the Institute of Higher Learning where I work, we’ve just high-tailed it into an excelerated semester: seven weeks for a full-credit course. You should see the stunned, breathless, freaked faces of the students, only now realizing how crazybusy they will be until the end of June. Hah!

  18. Franki Avatar
    Franki

    As a gal who has to take a Medieval Art History Final tomorrow, I have a suggestion…STOP ASSIGNING ASSIGNMENTS AND STOP GIVING TESTS.

    Think how much easier things will be on you too!

  19. Mother Theresa Avatar
    Mother Theresa

    I can just picture you there, with your feet up, giving the students teacher-like looks over your magazine. You know, you really should get a 10-foot pole and take it to class. When the students come up, hold it out in front of you and say, “Don’t get any closer than the end of this pole or it’s an automatic F for you, Tiffany.”

  20. Mother of Invention Avatar
    Mother of Invention

    Teaching experience with 6-10 year-olds is like this: We come back from summer vacation, all tanned and healthy, full of energy…spend a full week prepping classrooms…then kids arrive and by the end of the 3rd week, we’re all sick and sport the year-long black circles around our eyes raccoon look.

    Bring on the summer!

  21. yinyang Avatar
    yinyang

    Those had better not be vanilla frosties you’re waiting for…

  22. Minnesota Matron Avatar
    Minnesota Matron

    The sixteen week semester is just too long — I couldn’t agree more. I teach some courses that cram an entire semester into 8 weeks. Nobody gets bored.

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