Tomorrow is a huge day for me. It is the first day of my graduate student career where I have to actually present material. And I don't have to do it just once; I get to do two different presentations, in two different settings.
First up, I am teaching my first lab section tomorrow. My stress has more to do with knowing generally what to expect, rather than fearing the unexpected. I know it'll be tough to learn 21 names. I know people won't listen. I know they'll complain. I know that when I ask questions, they'll be sluggish and tired and non-responsive. I know that there'll be stragglers as we make our way to the Fens, and that some groups of students will just not work quickly enough to make all six plant identifications. I know that many of them will do a poor job on the homework.
That's where my stress comes from, or at least most of it. Otherwise, I feel ... okay. I feel as well prepared as I can be, although I suppose like any good/prepared teacher, I keep thinking I could do even more, or that I should do more.
So that'll be 3 hours. I'm actually mostly concerned about standing/walking for three hours. I haven't mentioned anything to the lab director, mostly because I really don't have a lot of options, and I'm generally able-bodied. I'm going to consider going to student health services after the lab is over. I don't really have any homework I can do during my break between lab and my afternoon class, and my legs are certainly going to be swollen very severely. I'm worried about explaining to health services that there's really no problem, and I just need to ice and elevate for a while, but there's no feasible way for me to bring my own ice.
I would consider that my legs might be fine, but after today, I doubt it. After physical therapy this morning, my calves were all right; we did some extremely painful massage to try to help get the fluid moving out.* But I ended up running late to class, which was hugely embarrassing, and I had to walk so quickly and purposefully, my calves were swollen as badly as they had ever been by the time I sat down at a desk. So I assume that 3 hours standing and walking is going to destroy them. Great.
I've got lunch with a friend at 2 (yay!), and then at 4, I have to present a paper on protein folding. I think I understand most of it, but like I said, the audience is completely different this time, and I no longer have authority. Hopefully, I'll impress my professor, and be able to get the paper's ideas across to my classmates. I just want to get it over with (and in 24 hours, it'll be over! Except that I'll have to get up even earlier in the morning to teach my second lab, whoops).
Meanwhile, I'm exhausted. For some reason, I couldn't sleep last night at all. I went to bed at 2 after cleaning and getting my work done, but then at 4, I gave up on sleep and did flashcards for a bit. I fell asleep around 5:30, and let myself sleep till 7:30 instead of 7. My sleep wasn't restful; maybe it was because it had taken me so long to fall asleep, but I kept waking up because of the people upstairs making noise. Not partying noise like Friday night; just your run of the mill "time to get up and go to work/school" noise. But still, assholes!
I managed to get through the day with just one coffee, and I also almost feel like I got a full night of sleep. However, this bodes poorly for tomorrow; usually the second morning after a bad night of sleep is the worst morning. And after a full day tomorrow (8:30am until 8:00pm with rotation talks; I'll be gone from 7:45am until about 8:30-9pm), I have to get up at 6:30 for an 8:00pm start time, and I go almost non-stop until 5pm. And Friday is 11-3/4, with 5pm PT.
I bet I sleep all day Saturday. Just sayin'.
* I have a super high threshold for pain, but I seriously felt like I was being tortured for information or something. It's all for a good cause, but eesh!
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