It’s been hard falling asleep the past couple nights. I have a lot on my mind, which I guess I already blogged about, but it merits repeating.
And I should probably be in bed right now, resting up for my first day of classes, but I’m not.
I might be taking on more than I should be, seeing as it’s my first semester at Oberlin in over a year, but it’s still less than I had on my plate my previous semester here, fall 2007. Sixteen credits, working at the co-op, and a position at the Review. That’s not too much. But then there’s also a vocal ensemble and the ExCo I’m co-teaching. Shouldn’t that be manageable? And when am I going to go to the gym?
But what has really driven up my anxiety level in the past couple of days is just the fact that everybody is returning to campus after spending their own Winter Terms every which way. So I keep running into friends that I haven’t seen since who knows when. Okay, it’s not just that; it’s also that classes are starting tomorrow, and I’m not taking easy classes this semester.
I’m scatterbrained right now, trying to keep track of everything. This usually only happens to me about half-way through the semester. This time around—for various reasons—it’s happening before the semester even begins. We’ll see how it goes.
Responses to this Entry
I ran into an acquaintance the other day who was somewhere in the Low Country last semester...Belgium? I said hi to him in a surprised voice (because I haven't seen him since last spring) and he nonchalantly said hello as though no time had past at all. I'm not sure if everyone could pull this off, maybe if you just pretend that you never left, the "OMG How-are-you-you've-been-gone-so-long" conversations could perhaps be minimized.
Also, how many Obies aren't over-committed and loving it? Three?
Posted by: Lillie on February 2, 2009 10:19 AM
Overcommitment is clearly a campus-wide disorder--but one of those disorders that people here love having (if they complain about it, it's in a bragging kind of way). It affects almost all of the faculty I know, too.
In addition to the kind of people Oberlin attracts, I'm thinking it may have to do with the fact that we're in a small town in Ohio. When I try to explain to colleagues who live in, say, New York how great it is to work here, I try to make them understand how the extreme simplicity of our lives in logistic terms allows us to dedicate most of the time spent awake (which is addmittedly too much) on things that are fun and interesting and rewarding (as opposed to, say, commuting or standing in line to do an errand or circling for an hour to find a parking spot).
Posted by: Sebastiaan Faber on February 16, 2009 5:54 PM
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