Wind In My Head: What a loser!
Wind In My Head
Sunday, May 14, 2006
What a loser!
For the last two weeks, I've been getting up early to work. I've had too many papers to grade and too little time during the day to do it. So I sneak in unimaginable hours at 3 in the morning. It's been very exhausting and in the last week, my body was showing the physical signs of protest. There was the diarrhoea every night (no other time of day, just at night, before I go to bed, as if my body was begging me to take the night off, please- of course, I didn't heed it and it went on for a week). There was the rash (a little zit outbreak on my shoulders and my collar bones). There was the great internal imbalance (dizziness, aimed at keeping me in bed the entire morning because everytime I stood up, the floor moved on another plane) and the mother of all, great and overwhelming nausea that saw everything in reverse projectile, causing Packrat to think it was something else. But no, purely psychosomatic. Nothing hormonal about it. Just plain ol' exhaustion cranked up several notches.Well, as of yesterday morning, I'm done with the grading of the papers. And all my physical ailments quietly snuck out the back door without my knowing. I have a lull period until Tuesday before the mock exams come in, but until then, I have nothing. The strange thing is I feel a strange sense of guilt, that I'm not doing anything, that I should be working, but am slacking and therefore should be checked, reprimanded and sent to my table via the do not pass go, do not collect $200 route.
Packrat, of course, thinks I'm insane. But it's not an uncommon feeling. My students tell me all the time that they always feel a little bit lost after a big exam because they are all creatures of habit and all of a sudden, there really isn't much of a habit left. I felt it myself, at the end of honours year, after writing hefty dissertations and then having absolutely nothing to write all of a sudden. Hence, the birth of my first blog- before the term blog was even made popular.
I'm a creature of action. I can't sit still. I can't not do anything. I think if you made me stand still for too long, I'd start to vibrate on the spot. And at the end of the day, very loser lor. Slave to the Confucian slash Protestant work ethic. That's what has got me up at 7.15 on a Sunday morning.
Ondine tossed this thought in at 07:27
1 thoughts...
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At 12:40 am
Tym said... Please help my own Confucian slash Protestant work ethic in its deterioration by having coffee with me tomorrow afternoon. Tankyu.