tomorrow is the first day of the new quarter for me.
i feel like winter quarter just ended. and it did! job talks and meetings up until the last day of finals week. final grades due the tuesday of spring break.
and here i am, a week later, contemplating whether or not i should do a bit more work on my syllabus before i go to sleep. no, i have not finished the syllabus. yes, i did say that the first day of class is tomorrow. surely there are other professor procrastinators out there.
part of it is procrastination, but part of it is just that i feel like i'm being trampled underneath the quarter system: ten weeks of fall quarter, two weeks of vacation. ten weeks of winter, one of week of vacation. ten weeks of spring. then, mercifully, summer. for research and writing and all the other things i should be doing all year along to maintain my professional standing.
there is so much more time within a semester system. fifteen full weeks of a semester. four weeks of vacation. fifteen more weeks of spring semester interrupted by a week for spring break and then a full summer. i miss that (seemingly luxurious) rhythm.
oh i know that all the 8AM to 5PM workers hold no sympathy. it's a flexible job and i do have a lot of time "off." but, as an academic, do you ever feel like you're "off." i feel like i'm always thinking about what i should be doing, even if i'm not actually doing it. case in point, i obediently brought several books with me to bakersfield over spring break. i only cracked a few open, but they were just sitting in my room, making me feel guilty about what i could/should be doing.
like tonight. blogging but knowing that i could/should be working on the syllabus. and when i dream tonight, it will surely be about immigration and the history of chicano/as. *sigh*
@>-->>---