HTSS: Day One, cont'd

4:29 pm "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb."

Next major anxiety attack. I'm working on revising the syllabus for one of my autumn courses, and I could really do with a cigarette about now. It's interesting what triggers this urge: sitting and trying to concentrate for too long, particularly while making decisions about things that are going to affect my life intimately in the future but over which otherwise I have complete control now (e.g. how many pages to ask the students and, therefore, myself to read). It should be easier than this nowadays to put together a reading list; after all, there is so much online. So much easier than having to order collected readers or even putting photocopies on e-reserve. But I still have to find those online sources and make sure the translations are good. If I were really diligent, I would reread all of the sources that I want to assign, but there will be plenty of time for that once term starts. Now, I just want to get things sorted so that I can tell the library what I'll need in the way of scans. But there's still the anxiety: should I change more of the readings? Keep the assignments the same? Think about using something else? Yup, exactly the kind of process that makes me want to reach for a cigarette.

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