Busy, and oh so tired...

This week has been crazy, and I feel like I've hardly had time to breathe, but I have an awkward 20 minutes between obligations and there's not much you can do productive in 20 minutes, so I thought I'd just post a quick blog.

My Mondays and Wednesdays are really full. I have to leave for campus by eight in the morning, and I don't return home until at least eight at night (later both days this week), and I have very little free time during those hours to even work on school stuff. Normally I have Tuesday completely open, but yesterday was the Michigan primary, which meant I spent a good part of the day doing field observations for my research class. This morning as I dragged myself out of bed at 5:30 (my body thought this was a really bad idea at the time), to face the 12+ hour school day, I began wondering if I was going to survive the semester.

What is saving me is teaching, actually. Today I was going to lead the lesson in the class I am a teaching assistant for. It was my first time in front of the class for anything substantial, and I'd stressed the day before about putting together the lesson, and I was so exhausted when the time arrived that getting up and being enthusiastic about math was about the last thing I wanted to do. But as I have found countless times before, teaching is a very energizing activity. I have to admit that the first of the two classes didn't go so well, and I still felt more energy leaving the class than when I had entered (and then it helped that the second class went a lot better - I learned from my mistakes the first time around). On Monday I taught my first class of the semester at the community college, and it was so much fun! The students were bright-eyed and enthusiastic, and the lesson went well, and I felt incredibly organized since I have taught this class once before. Teaching math can be tiring in its own way, but every time I do it I am reminded how much I love it, and am reminded that teaching can be as much an intellectual challenge as grad school (in a very different way, of course) except that it's easier to see how you're making a difference. At times like these it is very tempting to want to quit grad school and just go do what I love doing.

Yesterday's political events were time-consuming, but they were interesting. In the morning I went and voted at the elementary school listed as my polling place, and then I stuck around for a while to do a field observation. I thought maybe it would be strange to just sit there, but apparently there is some kind of law about polling places being open to public observation, and so there were seats set up for that very purpose (although I was the only public observer in the time I was there). It was kind of fun to watch people come in and vote, and to talk with the people who were working at the polling place, and even find out a little bit about the rules and regulations. For example, they have to have at least four workers in the polling place at all times, and both parties must be present at all times. There were six workers where I was observing (two of them were high school students, but they were on their lunch break most of the time) and a lot of thought had to go in to how to arrange breaks so that the rules were met at all times.

After that, I went to a speech by John McCain in Ypsilanti. I had a ticket so I bypassed all the ticketless people lined up in the lobby, but it was an orange ticket, which meant I didn't get to enter until all the white-ticket people entered, and us orange ticket people all ended up standing around the periphery. The speech was really interesting. I have never been to anything like this before, and the strangest part was actually just seeing John McCain. When you have only ever seen someone on national television and in newspapers and magazines, it's kind of odd to see them in person. Or maybe I should say it is strange because it is not really all that strange, because you see that they are real, very normal people. Senator Joe Lieberman was also there (the surprise guest), although he didn't say much of significance ("I support John McCain," "John McCain should be the next president of the country because...," "I have known John for a long time and I can vouch that he really means what he says"). The experience of clapping when I agreed and refraining from clapping when I didn't (or just really wasn't sure) was interesting - as well as the experience of observing when other people clapped or refrained from clapping. It actually made me wish I could hear other candidates speak in real life, because I found that I got a much better picture of what John McCain is about than I have just listening to and reading the news over the last few months. Even reading candidate websites isn't quite the same as hearing it directly from their mouth. Interesting stuff.

Anyway, now my 20 minutes is up so I'm off to the community college for the last part of my 12-hour school day...and tomorrow I don't have any scheduled obligations during the day. This means it will be the first day of the week I get to work on being 100% productive, and I will (because I have to). But I also think that I deserve a little bit of down time after almost none for these last three days....