Source: Kelsey Lovefushion Photo

Wednesday was my first day at work this week.  Actually Wednesday was the first day outside of my house this week.

It was MLK weekend and I did my service as a volunteer at the Walk to Beat the Clock Summerville Cervical Cancer Walk and hung out with my friends that were in town for it.  Sunday was more unsuccessful; church hunting then relaxing.  With the extra day off from class, I was going to shop, get some lectures prepared, and organize all of my classes Blackboard sites.   Well a wave of stomach pain Sunday night canceled all of those plans.  What I thought was a 24 hour bug lasted through most of Tuesday.

Tuesday morning I called my chair told her I hadn’t been out of bed except when necessary since Sunday night.    By Tuesday evening I was back on solid foods.    Then the panic set-in.  I have three classes to teach on Wednesday, I’m not prepared!     My first class starts at 2pm but the two others follow at 3pm and then 4pm.   I logged into my university email account and received a reminder for a meeting at noon!  The panic intensified.   I checked the syllabus for my noon class; there’s a test scheduled on Jan. 25.    Now I’m at stroke level.   I stayed up reading until 2am and set my alarm for 7am.  If I get in early I can get the lecture done before the noon meeting.

The clock went off,  my brain was moving but not my body and I slept another hour.    An email I had sent the night before needed to be reformatted and only existed on my home computer.  If I’d left the house earlier I would not have received the message and there was a deadline for this submission.   I pulled the laptop into the kitchen and made breakfast while reformatting the document.

I made it to campus at 9:30 a.m. and started furiously typing my lecture. Then I opened my email Inbox;  several emails from my chair that required a reply by today.  So I had to stop working on the lecture again.   Like Prof. Cali I studied broadcast journalism and was a news producer for years.  So why was I tripping??? I know how to change the game and make it work.  Instead, continuing to raise my blood pressure I answered all of the emails and came up with new plans for all my classes for the day.   In the 2 pm class we would review Chapter 1 instead of going into the new material in Chapter 2 and instead of the test being on Monday it would be backed up a day.   For the class at 3 pm we would spend the class time on an online exercise and for the 4 pm class, we  could continue to work on the group exercise that started last week.  The additional information I wanted to present to them today would be completed and posted to the Blackboard.

Around this time last semester, I also got sick, and lost my voice.   This is one trend this diva does not want to set or follow.   Lesson for the week, things happen, improvise and move on.

Air Kisses,

Professor Diva Mac