Lately I keep thinking about the time close to 20 years ago when I attended a college event on a docked sternwheeler. I don't recall the topic of discussion, but the boat bobbed on the water and attendees enjoyed an open bar, so when an administrator got up to spread his arms wide and admonish us all to consider the needs of The students! The students!, he wobbled a bit. Looked like he might fall over at any moment, in fact. People sitting near the front braced themselves to catch him if he fell or at least avoid the carnage.
Today I feel like that dude--wobbly, trying to remain upright on a shifty and uncertain surface, but still devoted to serving the needs of my students even though I could fall flat on my face at any moment.
Yesterday there were many such moments. First day after Spring Break and the time change and I arrived in my office to find no heat in the building. Outside temps in the mid-twenties; inside, colleagues sitting in their offices in full winter coats, hats, and gloves. I put up with it as long as I could and finally turned on my space heater--just for five minutes, just to take the chill off--and promptly blew a fuse, shutting off power to all the offices in my corner of the building.
We lowly academics are not permitted to reset a circuit breaker, so I reported the outage to the building coordinator, who reported it to the Physical Plant, who sent someone over to restore electricity--four hours later. I guess they were busy. And so was I--trying to find a way to do my job without heat or electricity.
But I survived that. And I survived teaching in unheated rooms and sitting through a long, unnecessary meeting on a profoundly uncomfortable chair that made my bad hip so stiff that I could barely walk when it was finally over. And I survived three-quarters of the department chairs' meeting without any more than the usual amount of anguish.
But then the Powers That Be unleashed the new departmental budgeting process (surprise!), which exposed my areas of greatest anxiety and incompetence: working with spreadsheets. At first I thought okay, give me some time to figure this process out and I can get it done, but then they announced the deadline.
The ground shifted. My heart started racing, my brain spinning, my head wobbling. No way I can complete this complex task in that amount of time, I told myself, but then the tiny Puritans who live in my brain starting huffing and puffing about the necessity of meeting the deadline, but then my deep-seated anxieties about money started screaming that the deadline is impossible, and then those prim little Puritans reminded me that it would be unseemly and untidy to allow my head to explode in front of all those people whom I respect, and then I started silently drafting a letter of resignation.
An over-reaction? Maybe, but it was nothing compared to the way I reacted when I finally arrived home to discover that one of the ravening beasts who shares my household had eaten up all but a tiny sliver of the pineapple-upside-down cake I'd been saving for myself. After the day I'd experienced, the absence of cake felt unforgivable.
After a good night's sleep I'm still feeling wobbly and I'm waiting for the next shift in the uncertain surface I'm standing on while I try to appease the tiny Puritans and the anxiety monsters and the ravening beasts, but I haven't written that letter of resignation just yet, mostly because I'm devoted to meeting the needs of my students.
The students! The students! I cry, hoping that someone catches me when I finally fall on my face.
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