Life gets progressively better on the tenure-track because you acquire experience and can plan ahead to make your life easier.
I know, for example, that two weeks after the spring break, I become completely exhausted. I remembered that when I was planning my syllabi for this semester and scheduled an exam for next Tuesday in all of my courses. Now I will have a day free from teaching exactly when I really need one. And then there will be grading, which really relaxes me and brings me to a happy zen place.
I know, I’m weird.
Please explain how the grading-Zen thing works.
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I always grade to a marathon of my favorite TV show. 🙂 two weeks ago, for example, I graded a huge stack of compositions and labwork to two seasons of Buffy.
I’m an autistic which means that I have two channels in my brain that work independently of each other. And it gives me almost physical pleasure to have both channels occupied at the same time. For example, I can read and watch TV at the same time. Or write in Spanish while talking on the phone in Russian. The channels are completely independent and don’t disturb one another.
I know this sounds extremely weird but that’s autism for you. 🙂
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So it’s not something I could learn to do. Oh well. I can’t manage multiple things at once. But it’s amazingly cool that you can write in Spanish while talking in Russian.
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