I got my final grades in today for Spring 2022–it’s the end of my 23rd year of teaching.
My 24th year begins on 6/20, starting with class 316. Over the next week, I need to finish putting the course page together.
And I’m starting to panic: in addition to teaching both summer sessions, I have to get ready to leave the country twice. I leave for Spain in three weeks: I have two conferences back to back there.
And it’s official: I’m going to Dublin at the end of September.
I need my brain to shut up about it all, though, so I can sleep. It’s especially worried right now about how to pack for over two weeks in Spain (while working) and almost three months in Dublin. It keeps reminding me that I’m not supposed to carry anything heavy.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve introduced the senior comedy show, been to Jacob’s goodbye show, and hosted the extraordinary stand-up class final performance.
I got all dressed up for the senior comedy show: the theme was black tie, and I didn’t have an appropriate outfit, so I had to get a new one. I pulled some black heels out of the very top of the closet. The bottom of both came off before I made it out on stage.
Saying goodbye to my graduating comedy students is breaking my heart.
Last weekend, I saw three plays: a workshop of a new musical about Houdini, Henry V via National Theatre Live, and The Lifespan of a Fact at CapStage. I was especially interested in the latter, since I’ve met its subject, John D’Agata. His aversion to fact checking (and the play about it) is mentioned in Melissa and my sources textbook. One of the authors of the play and I got to chatting on social media after I posted about it.
I’ve recently started dating again. In fact, I was a very sweet guy’s first date from the internet ever. He seemed genuinely surprised when I told him how common it was to find someone there. I had an awful second date with someone too.
Dating is always anxiety producing, and I think of Margaret Atwood’s quote in Cat’s Eye: “I’d been reading modern French novels and William Faulkner as well. I knew what love was supposed to be: obsession, with undertones of nausea.”
The boy and I saw Bob’s Burgers: The Movie, which was great.
My colleagues and I got together at the park–someone missing how I used to spoil them at the grading sessions I ran asked me to make something, so I treated them all to rum cake.
My son’s new girlfriend gave me farm-fresh eggs, and I made quiche, scrambled eggs, and pound cake. She also brought me a new whiskey: so good!
I’ve also been writing a lot of letters of rec, I got a dental cleaning and filling fix, did my yearly eye appointment, and ordered new glasses. I also wrote a furious letter to UCD, after a shot nurse there decided she was done giving me the asthma drug I desperately need, without telling me (I was still on the schedule and still showed up for my appointment, though she was nowhere to be found), and without making sure I could get the shots with my new allergist. So I guess I’m just going to miss this month’s doses.
I watched the first day of Congressional testimony in the January 6th investigation and cried.
I didn’t get Covid, though I feared I would. It’s a matter of time, I know. It’s just too contagious to avoid it forever.
In closing today, I’ll leave you with the best compliment I got from a graduating student: “Yours was the first class at UCD that I couldn’t bullshit my way through.”
