A little bit away

T-minus two days...

...and boy could I use it.

It's Monday, and it's already been a long week. My students have a paper tomorrow, and a bunch of them met with me today, or emailed me today, barely started their essays, or asking questions that they should know the answer to, or asking for extensions that they should have asked for a week ago. My patience, which was already wearing thin, is now at such a longtime low that I turned off my email at around two today and intend to leave it off at least until tomorrow morning. This late is just too late, and they should have been in touch with me earlier.

In addition, I need to work. I'm giving a lecture tomorrow, and although I'm well prepared, I like to review my notes and fuss with them before I give the talk. A lot. It makes me feel more comfortable, and I need some uninterrupted time for this in prder to give the best possible lecture.

Really, I'm a perfectionist. I fuss. I do powerpoint. I arrange and rearrange. I replace images with ones with better resolutions. I find more relevant images. I switch slides around and change wordings. In a way, I take pleasure in it. I really like my work to be good, and I like for it to make sense, flow logically, and look as good as possible. And I'm willing to put a fair amount of effort into this (and, just to be fair, I do spend at least an equal amount of time on research and planning, so that the content is good as well, and makes sense and flows in at least a somewhat logical order.)

But, I've been working hard on this. And public speaking still makes my knees shake (literally, sometimes, which is why I like having a podium in front of me to secure myself behind, and to hold onto if need be.) And I've spent some insane amount of hours (like...8...or 10...or something) on meeting with and composing emails to students. And I have a huge pile of marking coming my way. So yeah, I'm looking forward to getting away, even if away isn't completely away from everything that's going on right now. 'Cause even a little bit away is looking pretty damn sweet right now.