First Day Bitching

For some reason, since I've been teaching at this particular college, the first day of instruction every semester coincides with the first day of my period. This semester, that meant teaching my first day (I teach 4 writing classes back-to-back) with intense lower-back pain. I had to force myself to stand up straight beacuse bending over was the only mildly comfortable position I could get in. Oh, I took ibuprofen. It worked like a tic-tac. When I got home, after an 11 hour day in which I did not accomplish everything I needed too, I went to bed early after realizing that lying in the floor with my knees pulled to my chest was the only thing keeping me form crying. But I took one of my migraine meds that contains a muscle relaxant, and that helped. I slept for a long time and feel better now. Though my lower back is still sore and tender.

Now, you be wondering, how can you work for 11 hours and still not be done? Well, the bookstore sold out of every book I'm using for every class. So I was trying to a few copies of the first chapter of each book made for the students who were SOL. At least the bookstore staff wasn't yelling at my students for being stupid (when it was totally the bookstore's fault) like they did for another department's students. Every professor I talked to yesterday said that the bookstore either ordered the wrong books, too few books, or was giving the wrong books to their students. There are always bookstore issues based on the logistics of how the store is set up and normal beginning-of-semester chaos, but this semester is insanely ridiculous.

And then, beacuse all of my classes are overloaded, I was trying to make copies of my first-day handouts, of which I had made extras expecting a couple of extra students, but did not have enough to cover all of the extra students I got even after giving away my copies. Why are all of my classes overloaded? Because the uni decided to cancel a much needed section of first-year comp and those students had to be placed somewhere. Had they spread out over the all of the sections, then this wouldn't be so bad--each prof gets one extra student. But no, I have one-fourth of them. I do know that I have access to the roster and know how many students I have, but faculty don't get to touch the precious copiers and so my syllabus is due for copying a week before classes actually begin. I based my estimate on how many students advisers typically squeeze in, not realizing a whole class had been canceled.

And meetings. Meetings suck time away.

Oy. I just stood up to close the curtains before the sun turns my apartment into an oven (no classes on TR means I can work from home if I want), and my back is already worse. I was stooping like an old crooked woman. I'm going to try ibuprofen again while this is still mild.