That Monday Class

 I think I go overboard with certain projects, like this 3-hour afternoon class I teach on Mondays, which I've written about before. I could spend days and days planning what to include, reading over articles, notes, looking at videos - it becomes an obsession. This week's topic was argumentative writing and so I go through all my overflowing files filled with ways to teach argument. I find it a daunting, challenging task, unlike teaching narrative writing, and perhaps it's for that reason that I spend an inordinate amount of time preparing.

And so my dining room table is strewn with books and file folders on argument, and it overtakes my life. I don't bring up my clean laundry when I'm in the throes of planning a lesson. I don't pay that bill that sits there. I don't order the baby gift that I should get out in a timely fashion. I can barely eat lunch before my class, as I attempt to pull it all together (today was worse than usual. I usually do eat a leisurely lunch). Then, of course, I forget how to take material I just scanned to my email and add it to this week in Blackboard. A quick call to my daughter reminds me how to do it: click the download icon on top right, click the arrow on bottom left, go to 'open with system viewer,' save file in downloads. I'm in a frenzy right before class. Teaching remotely for three hours has its pitfalls.

I vaguely remember doing this when I would write English papers in college. I'd turn it into an event - put on a long skirt, seek out a cool place to do my writing, spend hours thinking. But the greatest payoff overindulging in a project comes when you're done. The relief, the freedom, the sheer sense of real accomplishment makes up for all the prior lunacy.

I think I'll go bring up the laundry now.