August 5, 2008

Change is Good

I sold my house. I moved in with my parents on the other side of town. I’m anxiously anticipating my new home being finished so I can move in and return my parents back to the serene life they lived before my kids moved in. With all this change, it’s best to keep everything else normal, unchanging, the status quo.

No thanks.

Last week I accepted an adjunct instructor position at a local college. I’ll be teaching two courses of freshman "Composition and Research" two days a week. I am excited and terrified at the same time. I chose textbooks for my classes without having a chance to really read them thoroughly first. Thank goodness that I seem to have chosen well. I have less than three weeks to finish planning my course, create my lessons and print up my syllabus. To say that I am nervous would be the understatement of the year.

I remember my first day of teaching 9th grade many years ago. I arrived over two hours before my first students would arrive and paced in the classroom. I worried about everything. After my first day, I settled down and relaxed. It was a challenging year, but a good one. I worked hard and I had a ton of time to plan. I had no children then.

Things are a bit different now. Today, I wore the girls out on their bikes so that they would zone out and watch a movie so I could plan a bit. Tonight, I dropped Big I off at her art class and spent an hour sitting in my car planning my course. If you consider the fact that my books just arrived this week, and I am already well into planning October and November, you would have to agree that I’m plugging along just fine.

I know I’ll be fine once I’m back in the classroom and the class starts to get rolling. It’s always the anticipation and the unknowns that make things so scary. Tomorrow, a friend who teaches at the college is going to give me a tour of the campus. It should be fun and informative. I am hoping that it eases the nerves a bit, so I can get my class completely planned out by the end of the week. I want to be able to relax at the beach next week, checking all the stress at the hotel entrance so that I can finally enjoy the fact that we’ve sold our house, and are starting on a new path in our lives. I’ll be returning to the classroom in more ways than one this year.