I’ve calmed down tremendously.  I think it’ll get worse (stress attack tonight or tomorrow) but by Thursday, I’ll be cruising and happy again.

Basically, once I’m through October, life will be much easier.  Thursday I’ve got a Complex Analysis midterm and homework due, Saturday I’m going to the Texas State Fair, Sunday I’m going to the Cowboys game, next Wednesday I’m giving an exam and grading it the same day, next Thursday I’ve got a topology midterm (yeah, it got moved again) and homework due, next weekend I’m going to Bradley’s college’s homecoming with him (it’s going to be fun, but it’s a long trip), the following Tuesday I’ll have a take-home topology exam due (yeah, we get TWO midterms in that class), and then my life should be more-or-less back to normal.  (At some point I have to give a presentation in my algebra class, but there’s no set timeline and as long as I present by the end of the semester, I’m fine.)  The only part I’m really stressed about is the midterm this week, so if I can just make it to 11AM on Thursday, all I’ve got left after that is making sure I manage my time well.

By the way, it’s still summer weather here.  Well, not Texas summer, but normal-people summer.  80’s and whatnot.  I LOVE IT.  It’s been so beautiful.  Fall may overtake summer as my favorite season while I’m living here, just because the weather is so comfortable.  Plus, football is in full swing.  In general, life is good.

If you read the above, you’ll notice I’m giving my students another exam soon.  I finished writing it yesterday, and I love this exam even more than the first one.  The material is more interesting and cohesive, the exam flows, and it’s much more reasonable in length so I think my students will do better.  Just a little more editing and it’ll be ready to go.  Oh, that reminds me, I only have my lecture notes prepared up through the exam, so I’ve got to start writing those again soon as well.  I’ve only got 10 more sections to go through out of the book, though, so that’s not that bad.  I just have to go through and prepare chapters 4 and 5.  Chapter 4 is about exponential and logarithmic functions and Chapter 5 is about systems of equations.  Chapter 4 will be fun for me and hell for my students, and I’m not sure how Chapter 5 will go…

Yesterday there was a pretty cool talk/presentation given in the department.  The speaker discussed tips and tricks for applying to jobs at liberal arts schools.  As most of you know, I went to a liberal arts school for my undergrad degree (Ursinus College).  The talk brought up all kinds of memories about how Ursinus worked, some of them good, and some of them bad.  Basically, it made me angry all over again that some of my favorite professors in the department lost their jobs and were forced to leave.  Some of the crap the administration pulled with them was ridiculous.  Whenever I think about it, I tell myself I’d never want to work in that kind of environment, where politics that have absolutely nothing to do with your job performance and people who know absolutely nothing about the field you’re working in determine whether you keep your job or not.  But honestly, that kind of stuff happens in almost every field, not just academia, and certainly not just in liberal arts colleges.  Then I think about the positives of educating in a liberal arts college – small classes where you can teach instead of perform, students who are self-motivated and love the material, ability to influence the curriculum and teach what you want to teach (and what your students actually want to learn!) without too many administrative hoops to jump through (in comparison to a public institution), focus on research and student involvement in research without the pressures that I imagine come with doing research at a huge state research institution or a super prestigious huge university, etc.  I can think of some of the advantages of big state universities too, now that I’m working in one, but I also think UNT is pretty low stress as far as big universities go.  I don’t know… I go through phases.  Sometimes I think teaching at a college/university would be a sweet gig for me, and sometimes I think I wouldn’t be able to stand it.  Honestly, I think it would be a unique institution that would actually give me everything I want in a workplace and ALSO need exactly my skill-set and attitude, ie, a perfect fit job.  I don’t know how one goes about finding the perfect job, or how one times their job search so that they are looking for a job at the exact time that their perfect-fit-place is looking to hire.  It just sounds like a bad and stressful set-up.

Sigh.  I don’t know what I’m going to do when I graduate!  But I can’t stress about that now; I have a midterm to worry about!