Sleeeeeeeep

Good Lord, I'm beat! I had no idea that teaching was so physically demanding! When I'm not lecturing (on my feet) I'm wandering around the class making sure people are doing their work (also on my feet) or tutoring a student who needs extra help (usually sitting down, but still exhausting in its own way). And then there's the grading. The neverending grading. Right now I have over a hundred quizzes just sitting in my bookbag, waiting to be graded. Ick. Grading is my least favorite thing to do at the moment.

Overall, as I end the second week of my new job, I'm very happy. I know most of my students' names at this point, I know I've connected to many of them on a personal level, and the ones who've decided they don't like me can just suck it up and deal. My colleagues have been nothing but supportive and helpful, and my boss has told me that she thinks I'm doing a good job. The only thing I could really want now is more sleep. I'm fine while I have a class going, but during my conference periods it's all I can do to keep from laying my head down on my desk for a nice little nap. If there was space in my room for a couch, I might just consider bringing one in for a quick break every now and then.

The reason I'm telling you all of this is that I feel like I need to justify my desire to jump into bed before 9:00 every night. I can't, of course, because i have lessons to plan and the aforementioned papers to grade, but I really want to. This weekend can't come fast enough, and I'm already looking forward to the week I'll have off at Thanksgiving just because I want to catch up on my sleep deficit!

I know that at some point parts of this will get easier. I'll get more adept at planning my lessons, I'll actually have a free conference period now and then to catch up on my grading, and the being-on-my-feet thing won't be so hard anymore. Until then, though, I may have to resign myself to the fact that it's okay to hop into bed right after dinner if I really need the rest.