Wednesday

This is my longest day of the week. When I've survived Wednesday, the rest of the week is easy. Thursday is only-one-class day, and Friday, although I have two classes, I do not have lab, and it's also Friday.

But Wednesday remains to be survived. Part of it is the whole responsibility thing - am I the only person who worries, intensely, when there's something they're even partially responsible for going off without a hitch? I always worry before the Wednesday-night-stravaganza: will the people who signed up to fix food remember? (once or twice this did not happen which meant I did an emergency cold-cuts-and-bread run in a hurry). Will the kids be okay or will there be some horrible boil-over issue from the schoolday? (It's happened). Will the lesson go down okay or will people have issues with it, or will they be totally inattentive? (I can't count the number of times I've had to ask people to get up off the floor, or put the iPod away, or whatever). Will everyone be in their appointed places at the appointed time, or will I be running all over the place like a crazed rabbit trying to take care of everything, when I patently can't?

I mean, I joke about "what's the worst they could do? Fire me?" in regards to volunteer responsibility, but when something goes wrong and someone complains, I feel horrible. I mean, want-to-crawl-in-a-hole horrible.

Don't get me wrong - I find the whole thing tremendously fulfilling and am always in a better mood after doing it. But it's stressful to plan for.

there's also the issue of teaching two labs sans TA. I always lose out on the TAs because I'm shy and unaggressive and never think of asking certain students if they'd want to be my TA, and by the time I get around to it, it's too late. (Hmm...not too unlike my Prom Experience.). Generally this is not too bad but if it's some kind of difficult and precise-instruction-heavy procedure, I kind of get run ragged. (At least this semester the students have taken to heart my admonition to read the labs BEFORE lab, it seems).

But I don't like Wednesdays much these days. It's up at 5 - exercise - over to work at 7 - teach two morning classes and hold office hours - afternoon lab - run errands - go to the church thing - and then get home again by 8 pm, if I'm lucky. It's just tiring. (The sad thing is? In grade school, Wednesday used to be Art Day and it was my favorite day of the week because of that). Now, it's just such a killing grind that I can't think about what time I will get home (and how many hours in the future that will be) when I get up, or I have this horrible feeling of unfairness and doom (as in: it will be fifteen hours - FIFTEEN HOURS - before I can even think of relaxing again).

It's one of those things that makes me wish there was a real LYS where I lived...because then I could promise myself, "when you're out running errands after class, you can stop in for 20 minutes and pet the yarn, and maybe buy a skein of something or a new pattern." Or a real bookstore, and tell myself that I can go in and see if there are any cool new magazines or if that detective novel I've been wanting to read is out in paperback yet. It's not the same when the nearest thing you have is the Mart of Wal.