I'm sitting in my classroom watching my students frantically scribble responses to exam questions, my throat sore and raw and my brain overwrought from the effects of running from class to meeting to class, when someone softly knocks on the door. It is the English department secretary with a cup of hot tea. Just what I needed. Give the woman a raise! (Except there's nothing left in the budget, so never mind.)
Rough week, rotten weather, too many meetings and too much committee-produced prose: it's time to bring a little sunshine into the situation so I won't be glum all weekend. So as I sip my tea, I turn aside from everything that's dragging me down and consider what in these dark days can make me smile:
- that adorable video of my grandbaby walking
- a working group that knows how to work well as a group
- teaching Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," with its lovely and unexpected moment of transcendence at the end
- the bowl of Dove chocolates in a colleague's office
- watching my Creative Nonfiction students write themselves to the edge of the cliff and then jump off and find their parachutes
- the impending approach of baseball season, canoeing season, and giving-awards-to-deserving-students season
- being here (still!) and doing what I love (most of the time) with people who (usually) don't annoy me too much
- the end of the exam--and the beginning of the weekend
Suddenly it's so bright in here I'm gonna need shades.
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