Britt's Blog

A disturbing number of people (that number being three) have given me a blank look when I mentioned teaching Wednesday, and said, “Wait, I thought Tuesday was the last day of classes.”

Turns out the first two were professors who don’t teach on Wednesday, so they had it hardwired in their brains that “Tuesday is the last day I teach, therefore Tuesday is the last day of the semester.” The first time it happened, I got a lovely little adrenaline rush, ’cause, wait, did I get confused about the last day of classes? The second time, I was a) pretty sure they were wrong, because I double checked after the first one yet b) extra freaked out, because now a second person was maintaining that Tuesday was the last day of classes.

The third time was my dear husband, and I have only myself to blame, because I told him this weekend “I only have to teach two more days.” He thought I meant Monday and Tuesday, but I don’t teach Tuesdays, so, as of Saturday, I only had to teach two days, Monday and Wednesday.

But, seriously, please, everybody, stop messing with my head! My students seem pretty convinced that they have to go to class on Wednesday, but I have a disquieting and irrational notion that I’m going to walk into the classroom tomorrow and nobody’s going to show up, and I’m going to stand there with the lab equipment I bought and tested for my morning class and weep about the extremely lucid lecture on the mind-bendingly impossible-to-understand Inflationary Epoch that I prepared for the afternoon.

I’ve decided that giving myself choices is bad. Choices lead to the possibility of making the wrong choice.

Habit is good. Routine is good. Doing the thing I ought to be doing, at the same time, every day, whether I feel like it or not, is the way to get that thing done.

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