Trying for hope

I admit, I go back and forth. I've had, off and on, feelings of "why the heck am I even trying to teach this? Why will we need this in the dark future we are apparently headed to?" (right now, this centers on the roughly 8 hours a week of preparation I'm doing - on top of all my other stuff - for the Advanced Biostats class).

I felt this way too after 9/11/2001. I remember I was teaching probability in regular biostats - I've never been that good at it, never having had a class specifically IN probability. (But now I have a book! Which I don't have time to read at the moment...). Ever since then I've had a small visceral reaction when that section rolls around, despite having changed greatly how I teach it since then.

But yes. People tell me "despair is a sin" and I can see that, but it's the one temptation I find myself most tempted by many days. (That, and eating more sweets and calories than is ideally good for me, and spending money I might better either put aside for my retirement or donate to a cause helping people in need on frivolities*). But it's hard not to look at the world and feel some measure of despair.

It's also hard right now in my little circle. One of my students lost his mother this week and is trying to make arrangements to make up stuff on his return (I offered that the exam he would take today could be his drop, if he so chooses). Another student lost a cousin and is going to be absent Monday for the funeral. And right now I have a student taking today's exam early so she can drive to OKC to the hospital where they are taking an uncle off life support later today. And there's just so much pain, it's so heartbreaking. Especially now, I know how hard and surreal it is to try to go about your "normal" life when your heart is breaking and you've lost someone you love. I am trying hard to be extra kind to those people - the student taking the exam early apologized for the short notice (it is a very good thing I bothered to check my campus e-mail last night; I often don't, or else I wouldn't have gotten her request). I told her that I had no problem with that, that I totally understood that sometimes end-of-life issues happen fast and suddenly and you don't have any time to plan and without going into detail (because she needed to start the exam and also I would very likely have started tearing up if I went into detail), I said that I had a similar experience over the summer...

All I can do is be compassionate to these  people. It's something but it's a very small something and it makes me unhappy that I can't actually FIX anything ever, I can only mitigate the suckiness of that thing a little bit. I think that's one of the hardest lessons I've learned in recent years; that you can't really make anything BETTER, you can maybe only - if you're lucky and work hard - make things be less-bad. But it seems so small and so futile.

I'm tired AAUW was last night, it was a long meeting with a slightly rambly talk and then I had a long drive home at like 8:30 pm in the dark on poorly lit roads. I don't like driving at night at the best of times.

Next week is going to be heck. Be forewarned, updates may be few and far between as I will probably be putting in 3, 14-hour days with the Skype interviews. I am already wondering if I should just plan on bringing lunch AND dinner food with me and eating two meals in my office and....that kind of makes me want to cry a little. I'm telling myself that though it may be awful it will only be for a few days, and after that, I will have Spring Break week off.

My plans are few; if the weather is okay and the field site hasn't flooded, maybe I grab a spring soil-invertebrate sample one day. If COVID-19 doesn't show up here between now and then, maybe I take a day and go shopping in downtown Denison (on a weekday, when there will be fewer people about - Texas' spring break is next week so week after next, kids should be back in school. Spend a couple days in my sewing room. Maybe clean up my house. Maybe make another "big" grocery (and natural-foods store) run with a better plan this time....just in case. 'Cos I expect we're gonna see more spread of COVID-19 on college campuses after spring break, because a lot of people aren't cancelling travel like I did, and so maybe, just maybe the "telecommute from home and go out as little as possible" will become even more of a thing.

I might order a fresh batch of salmon-in-a-pouch from SeaBear. I should take stock of how much I have left first (It doesn't keep good quite as long as cans do, and I've had this batch maybe a year).

(*I broke down and ordered a copy of "The Manga Guide to Regression" to quick skim over for pointers for next week and the week after spring break, and also threw a Jellycat stuffed chameleon (!) in the order with it. Because the chameleon's name was Colin, and I've been saying "Colin Colin Colin Colin Colin Chameleon!" in my head since I first saw it for sale...I am very much a child of my era...)

Edited to add: student came in after the exam and apologized for making spelling errors and admitted she was struggling a little and I told her about my dad (in the sense of "I know sometimes end-of-life stuff happens very fast and very unexpectedly") and we both teared up a little and I told her I'd be thinking of her today

But today is just fired. Too many people around me are hurting and I don't like it. 

I have to get back to work (I have only 20 minutes before I give my exam though, now) but I'm kind of emotionally gutted right now. That's the single freaking worst thing about being an older adult in academia: horrible things happen, they knock the knees out from under you to where you just want to go crawl in bed, but you still have to keep teaching yourself (bad words redacted) multiple regression and how it works so you can teach it to your students. Even if it's all utterly pointless, the dance must be kept up.