one month left

One month from today is Tuesday, August 23, the first day of two of my three classes. That means I have three syllabi to prepare in essentially three weeks (giving myself a week to get settled in the new place). So, let the teaching anxiety dreams begin.

Here's my new reasoning for why I have so many teaching anxiety dreams: I would probably literally die without teaching, and so the thought of messing it up is extremely upsetting to me. The one semester at Syracuse when I wasn't teaching and I was no longer taking courses was indeed one of the most depressing times of my life. The contact with others makes me feel human. Most anxiety dreams have me arriving late to class or unable to find the right classroom, but the very worst ones have me unable to control the class. They're all shouting which makes me have to shout, all of which stems, I know for a fact, from my VERY brief stint teaching fifth and sixth graders in Cincinnati. I literally cried every night. Post-traumatic stress syndrome of another sort.

Anyway, in the spirit of getting ready for back to school, I offer this wonderful line from Thomas J. Roberts' "On Low Taste": "We all do seem to have the capacity to disregard the facts when they threaten to cloud those deeper truths about ourselves that we prefer." Indeed, indeed.