Workin' hard or hardly workin?

I've been dreading this weekend for a while. I have two night classes this semester and I have to say, they're not so bad. When big assignments fall on the same week, it gets a little hectic, but so far I've been able to plan ahead and get all of my Monday night classwork done early enough to pencil in some Tuesday night classwork time. Until this week.

I missed my Monday class two weeks ago because we were on our 4H field trip - totally worth it, except as make up work I had to summarize all of the articles presented by other students and write up a book review to make up for my teacher's lecture. Not hard, just time-consuming. I finished most of that last weekend, on top of the four articles I had to present last Monday. No big deal. But THIS week is a doozy. I had a ten page paper to write for each class, one was just a position paper and all I had to do was read a bunch of articles on-line and decide who I agree with (if you saw my post about the weather lady from Washington, you can probably figure out how I feel about this Math Wars issue). But my Tuesday night Social Studies class was a bit more involved. I had to conduct a small-scale research project based on all the research I've read this semester, write up my results and interpret them in light of the three textbooks we've been reading, then make a ten minute power point presentation to present to my class this week. So, like an idiot, I waited until this past week to do my research project.

What's so bad about last week, you might ask? Well, my 21 students had portfolios due on Friday, which meant I had 21 portfolios due on Friday, AND I scheduled parent conferences this week. I was the worst teacher in the world this week! I gave my kids packets of busy work EVERY DAY so I could spend all day conferencing on portfolios, then I rescheduled any conferences I had from 3:30 - 4:30 so I could steal some kids from the after school program to do my research, then I had conferences at 4:30, 5:00, 5:30 and 6:00 Wed - Fri, then I had to go home and get ready to write these stinking papers. In summary, at 7:00PM on Friday night, I was looking at 2 ten page papers, a book summary, and a power point presentation. I wanted to kill myself.

Well, folks, it's Sunday night, and I am SO proud to say, I did it all!! Not only did I DO it, but I finished at 2:00 AM this morning, so I still had time to go to Keeneland with my family. And can I tell you a secret? While I was sitting at my kitchen table, tip tap typing away on my laptop, surrounded in books and articles and papers and highlighters, I looked up at the clock and it said 12:30 (AM). I smiled to myself because I actually enjoyed what I was doing. No lie. What I wrote was GOOD. My research is GOOD! For a brief moment I thought to myself, "I could do this for a living." At this point in the school year, I am so sick of grading papers, and calling parents, and making lesson plans. At this point in the school year, a PhD in education doesn't sound all that crazy. I could totally do it. And I'd be GOOD at it.