Just worn out.

Luckily, not in the field today. My student had Finanacial Aid drama (they messed up, not her) yesterday afternoon, and that prevented her from getting some other stuff on campus taken care of, and campus is closed on Friday...so she said she needed today to clear up the other stuff, and could we go out tomorrow?

At first I was all kind of "oh, OKAY" and annoyed at financial aid for altering our schedule, but after the rest of the day I had yesterday I'm glad I have today off.

First off, a meeting to replace an instructor who is leaving. We may or may not be able to get our best candidate (funding at the level he would be coming in at is pretty miserable). And even at that, because of concerns about unleashing a new, unknown person on the first-semester pre-med majors, the decision was made to reshuffle schedules and have "known quantities" teach the intro pre-meds class, which is known as Principles I.

Guess who may be teaching Principles I for the first time in her life?

THIS GIRL.

I'm a bit...frustrated isn't the right word, because I understand completely the reason behind the decision and I support it. Maybe "dismayed" is better. I really don't want a new prep this fall because I've got lab classes out the wazoo and labs are exhausting to teach. And I'm really not an experty expert on what Principles I covers (DNA, cells, biochemistry). And it's a "hurdle" course, which means you deal with a lot of frustrated and upset people in a semester (I already do that with Gen Bio, but in this case the stakes are higher so I expect the upset will be greater). And maybe it's good for me to cycle out of Gen Bio for a change and not teach it for a couple semesters. (The new guy would handle Gen Bio, with is the basic-level non-majors class)

But, whatever. Just, whatever. If I have to do it I can and I will. (And I hope that the person we hire turns out to be wonderful and totally able to handle Principles I and I will only teach it for a semester. Or, who knows, maybe when our New Interim Chair shuffles the schedules, she'll find she doesn't have to give me a Principles I section after all.)

A brighter spot after that was piano lesson. The teacher deemed me "done" with "Evening in the Country" (though I have it by no means - at least, to my own mind - perfect - and I may continue to pick away at it just for my own satisfaction). The new piece added on (I'm already working on Bach's "Invention #1") is an arrangement of Joplin's "Easy Winners." (I looked in my Joplin book - which is the pieces as he originally wrote them - and the non-arranged version is harder, not least because it's in the key of A-flat, rather than G, which is what the arranged piece has been transposed to).

It pleased me though, to start picking out the melody with my right hand and realize: hey, I know this piece, I've heard it before.

Then there was an evening meeting involving a group I am a part of. It involved some interpersonal drama, not involving me (part of the reason I was upset was that I was completely not expecting the drama). A big issue came out (or what I assume was a big issue, from the reaction), it's always better to deal with that kind of stuff head-on than to let it simmer (and it had been apparently simmering for a while) but this reminds me of a couple things about me:

1. I am the classic introvert in the sense that dealing with other people both wears me out, and gets me keyed up/stressed out to the point where it takes me a long time to calm down. I think some people who don't know me well, or who have the (yes, I'm using the 'Ponies again) "Fluttershy" stereotype of the introverted woman (tiny little girly voice, rarely speaks, afraid of her own shadow) don't get that I'm an introvert. This is because I have absolutely zero problems with public speaking, I am generally pretty fearless about stuff "out in the world," I teach for a living, I can do stuff like cold-call a reserve manager and ask permission to do research on the site (even though I HATE doing that kind of thing, I still can force myself to), and with people I know well and like, I can be quite garrulous.

But - I really do get worn out by what I would term the messiness of human life. People's problems, people's emotions, conflict, all of that - it makes me want to run and hide.

2. I don't do well with displays of strong emotion. I think this is because in my family, we just aren't that emotional. Oh, I've seen my father angry over stuff - either trouble one of us got into as kids, or over some injustice dealt to a student of his - but the anger was short-lived and usually resolved into a "okay, there's a problem that needs to be fixed, how do we fix it?" And I think I've seen my father cry a grand total of four times during my growing up years, and those were all linked to deaths of people he cared deeply about. And even my mother, who you might expect (stereotypically) to be more emotional - I've very, very rarely seen her angry, and only seen her cry a few times. And while I have cried and gotten angry over the years, more often than not it's been in private, when I was alone, and felt like I could release the pent-up emotion. Or with anger, I'm like my dad - a few minutes of frustration followed by an "Okay, what do I need to do to fix this?"

Maybe that's not healthy - I know some people would argue it's not - but it's who I am. I'm just not big on expressing lots of emotion in front of others, and in fact, if I cry in front of another person (excepting things like funerals, where I feel like it's kind of OK), I consider it a personal failure.

So I see displays of strong emotion as a Big Fat Hairy Deal, rather than mere venting, which is what they may be for some people. So I tend to get freaked out when someone breaks down in tears in a meeting and leaves the room, I feel like a bomb has been dropped.

(Speaking of metaphorical bombs - that's also how I feel about strong language. I rarely if ever curse, and rarely if ever use words stronger than "damn." So if someone unleashes an f-bomb, I tend to think of it as a big fat deal. And with some people, that's just how they talk.)

3. I really shouldn't feel bad about wanting to be alone and spending as much time alone as I do. It's a survival strategy for me. (No fooling: it took me a solid half hour of pacing around my house just doing "displacement behavior" stuff - reshelving books, shuffling paper around, paying a few accumulated bills - to calm down enough after the meeting to think about going to bed).

I wonder how people like me manage in situations where, for example, they marry into a very demonstrative family, where people are always shouting at each other and loud and hugging each other and everything. I had friends whose families were like that growing up - where everything seemed very intense and overwhelming to me, but it was SOP for them - and I couldn't imagine living in a house where people shouted all the time and seemed to get angry or upset at the drop of a hat.

4. I still need to work on not getting all stiff and uncomfortable when people want to hug me. (At the end of the meeting, one of the people wanted to hug everyone to show that she still loved them). I know, I know, it's an expression of love but I'm not terribly comfortable hugging people I don't know WELL. I will hug family members but that is usually as part of a greeting after we've not seen each other for a long time, or part of a leave-taking.

5. I always thought I was thin-skinned and took stuff personally but I guess I'm not so much. At least, comparing how I would react to a given situation to how I see other people react sometimes.

So anyway. I'm going to go in this morning and do a couple of soil samples, then I think I'm going to do the grocery shopping I need to get done before the weekend. I might even go to Sherman, I don't know. Gas has come down a little bit here and I almost feel like I need some time away from town.