I've got my sea-legs under me as the semester sails on

Three weeks into the new semester after eight months away from the classroom, I can finally make it through a four-class teaching day without feeling as if I've run a marathon. The physical demands of standing and waving my arms in front of a room full of students seem to get more exhausting every year, but three weeks in I'm getting along swimmingly.

Not that there aren't problems. I've seen some legitimate problems, including the word "ligitimit" in a student paper, which hurt my eyes. Also "Thanks for you're help." (Your welcome!)  Also "You don't really believe in the moon landing, do you?" But I've read enough student writing to know that it's about the same as usual, with less punctuation. One of these days we'll get back to the ancient practice of simply running all our words together with no indication of how they're connected, atwhichpointI'llretire.

I'm pleased with my committee appointment--tenure and promotion, with the opportunity to observe colleagues' classes and make a real difference in their lives. My favorite committee! Especially since I'm not chair--and the person who is chair knows how to run an efficient meeting. Gold stars all around.

I'm still getting used to my new office laptop computer, which arrived just before classes started. It's superior to the old one in every way except that keyboard is louder and--well, the only way I can describe it is clickier. It's also hard to tell whether the computer has entirely shut down, and one time I put the laptop into its little protective bag when I didn't realize it was still humming along and then I drove for a couple of hours, at which point I extracted a laptop on which I could have fried an egg. Not a happy moment. But the laptop survived and now I'm more careful about making sure it's off before I take it away.

And so we muddle along, inserting commas and deleting apostrophes and refraining from throwing erasers at intransigent students in the middle of class. It's a living. And now that I've got my teaching legs back under me, I may be able to go on doing this a little bit longer. (UntilIhavetoretire.)