Whew

OK, first day over. Man, that was hard. Not the day itself, but the anticipation of it. When will this get easier?

My preparation for class ran into a roadblock last Friday, when I got an email from my department that kind of broke my heart. The email informed me that I had done something wrong at the end of last term -- something that I really should have known better not to do, and yet somehow I did it anyway. There was some confusion and I made the wrong choice. I've noticed that this type of thing happens more now that I'm older, as though my brain doesn't do as good a job of putting the pieces together. Anyway, it wasn't fatal, but it was embarrassing. And while I apologized profusely and my apology was accepted and all that, I felt really really bad about it. Ashamed, actually. That's what I felt. Shame.

Shame is not a good emotion. Very destructive. And shame added to anxiety is almost paralyzing. Let's just say I didn't have a good weekend. I tried to pay attention to the tragedy in Paris, and other important things, and I couldn't -- just all wrapped up in my own mess.

Last night I went to bed early, even though I wasn't quite ready for class. I knew I'd have a couple of hours in the morning to finish getting ready and I also knew I needed to get a good night's sleep. I had the light off by 10:30 and I did sleep pretty well. Of course, I also had an anxiety dream. I dreamed that I got another email from my department head, this one informing me that my classes had been changed and I didn't have to teach until 5 pm. When I arrived to teach at 5 pm, of course the email had been a spoof, no times had been changed, and I'd missed teaching both my classes and was in BIG trouble with my department head. Bleah bleah bleah to anxiety dreams.

But when I was eating breakfast, I suddenly remembered that I'd had another dream. I'd dreamed that one of my students from last term came to my house, wanting to borrow a book from my father (who's been dead almost 26 years, but never mind). I pretended I couldn't find the book, because I knew my father didn't want to loan it out, but told the student that when I found it, I'd make a photocopy. What that dream said to me was that I am valuable -- to my students -- even if my department finds me lacking. It was an oddly reassuring dream.

Of course, when I got to campus (for real -- not in any of the dreams), I'd forgotten my code to use the photocopier (Alzheimer's, I swear), and I'd cleaned out my folder, including the piece of paper that had the code written on it, and when I finally got the code from our admin and started making copies, the photocopier ran out of toner -- and I got the last copy made about FIVE MINUTES before I needed to leave to walk to class. But unlike in dreams, I was actually fairly blase about it. I thought, oh well, if I don't get my syllabus copied, I'll just show it to the students on my laptop, or else we'll talk about something else.

While I was doing my copying, another instructor came in the copier room and we were chatting. I told her about my anxiety dream, and she said that a year or so ago she'd had a dream right before classes started that our department head had assigned her to teach a math class (instead of what we do teach, which isn't math). When she asked (in the dream) how on earth she was supposed to do that, the department head handed her a math textbook.

We laughed and laughed about our poor department head, who is a very nice person, but apparently shows up in everyone's dreams as a big meanie. And then I went off to class and of course everything was fine.

Whew.