Taking Forever

 The days are passing at normal speed, I know it. Yet it feels like everything is stuck. I've been knitting the same three projects for months: a pair of socks, a pair of mittens, a baby blanket. I think I'm happiest with the blanket. It is for my unborn nephew, due in early May, and I've been working on it every weekend since January. On Saturday mornings, after my walk, I listen to Radio Deluxe and do another 6-8 rows. The cables are massive and take a long time. The pattern is for a full-size blanket and mine is only about half as wide, but it is difficult to feel like I've made any progress, week to week even though I've used up six skeins of yarn so far.

I think the main problem is that life just keeps going on, every day basically the same as every other day. Some days I go to a classroom and talk to students about something, some days I stay home. We're down to the last month of the semester and I think I care more about their work than the students do. They are still very polite, and they humor me when I try to get them interested in whatever topic I have to tell them about, but no one cares. This part of the semester feels the worst, when I start questioning why I keep doing this job when obviously I am bad at it. Maybe I'm not good at anything else, either. What's the point?

But, yesterday was our first day off since the semester started (and we have another day off Monday) for the Easter break. I went to campus and spent the day grading papers in my office, in the nearly empty building, sort of like old times. It felt nice in a way, and I was happier after that. 

Today, after the weekly Zoom call with my family, we're going to a friend's house to sit outside and drink beer and talk. I have only been to two other gatherings in a year, both of them last August. It is a sunny, warmish spring day today (nearly 20 C!). It hasn't been too bad for me, but BAM used to have two or three friends over on Friday afternoons and they would sit outside and drink beer together. He hasn't been able to do that all winter and that has been hard for him. I guess I have less need for people (though not zero). It will probably be good to hang out with people before I forget how.

Monday I have an appointment for the COVID vaccine and I am looking forward to that. I felt such visceral relief when I made the appointment last Tuesday. Happy, of course, but also relief that maybe, maybe, maybe this nightmare might be almost over! I can still count the number of non-home, non-work places I have been (pet store a few times, supermarket twice, dentist twice, car service place twice, lab for a blood draw, Walgreen's for a flu shot, haircut place, Lowe's, and two small gatherings). I am afraid to feel too much hope, in case something still more awful happens. My parents this week mentioned they want to come visit us this summer and I can't even comprehend that idea.

Other than the teaching part, school has been terrible lately. I don't like the new Provost, I think he is either lying or has no idea what he's doing. In February he announced he is expecting the faculty to study the idea of changing our courses to a 4-credit standard (it's 3-credits now). That's not so bad since almost all my department's courses are already 4 credits anyway. His other big idea is to switch our semester schedule to a block schedule, to which my department is adamantly opposed. He also wants to reduce the number of adjuncts (I approve) teaching undergraduates, but won't answer who is supposed to teach their courses. It's not as if the college will hire an equivalent number of full-time faculty. He wants to cut the number of courses required for majors and minors, and cut the number of majors. This type of talk always makes the chemists anxious, as we have few majors but high expenses. Then, there's this presumption that the faculty will spend the summer working on all these projects and I have actually started to speak up in meetings to object. Firstly and most importantly because that's not how I want to spend my summer break. Secondly because I don't think it's right to put that kind of pressure on people who are going to feel they have no choice but to comply. Every time I talk to this Provost, I get the strong impression that he doesn't want to listen to me, that I am only opposing him because of my lack of vision (or something). He tends to fall into a rut of these same messianic plans no matter what topic is being discussed. He says he wants the faculty to decide, but it feels like the decision has already been made (by him) and he's just waiting for us to confirm, or submit. As I say, I don't like him.