Week two over

It's about 12:30am on Friday night right now, and I'm totally wiped.  But I figure I should summarize how the second half of my week went.

Wednesday was exhausting.  Lab went all right in the morning, but not as well as it could have gone, or as well as I had hoped.  My students seemed resentful and almost ... combative.  Like, before we even DID anything.  I also had one student show up 25 minutes late, and another student didn't show up.  Awesome.

After lab, my legs were in awful shape, but I didn't feel like finding out how great or not-so-great health services would be.  So I chilled in the lounge for a while, updating some important files.  I met my friend M. for lunch at the pub on campus, which was really fun.  By 3pm, though, I was nearly asleep on a couch.  Teaching is exhausting!

I went and did my protein folding presentation at 4.  I feel like I did an okay job--I'd give myself a B, maybe a B+.  My classmates didn't seem to understand what I was saying, or maybe they just really didn't have many questions.  The professor seemed to think I had done a good job, but I thought I was just highly disorganized.  I hadn't practiced giving that talk, so I wasn't feeling prepared, even though I'd read the paper three times.

Then we had a break for about an hour, which was fun/relaxing, before heading into the seminar room for the final night of rotation talks.  It went about a half hour over, so by the time I got home, I was practically crying I was so tired.  Phew!

Thursday morning, I got to campus early to get the candy I bought for my kids out of the lounge, where I'd left it the afternoon before.  Of course, it was locked.  The candy is now in my office; I won't be locked out of there!

My Thursday morning lab is all freshman, and they're absolutely badass awesome.  I can tell that things won't be perfect, but that these kids are definitely more eager to learn than the kids are in my Wednesday class.  We were able to get more done in the lab, and they were much more engaged.  Also, they thought I was funnier, so BAM.  Awesome.

Of course, I left my prep packet in a field bag in the lab.  I didn't have time to try to sneak in and get it by the time I realized it, but fortunately, the lab director was able to grab it for me.  Phew!

Then I had class, followed by office hours.  A. and I got caught in a huge downpour as we tried to run across the narrow street to get to our building.  It's RIGHT across the street, but we got soaked!  No one came to office hours, so we bummed around, eating candy.  Afterwards, I went to get my packet, and then I bumped into my friend S.  We ran to Starbucks to get some hot coffee for our next class, which was in a freezing lecture hall.*  Lecture was ... not that interesting, but our little clique in the back had an all right time alternating between paying attention and ... not so much paying attention.

That evening, I didn't get as much work done as I'd hoped I would, although I did email the coordinator with my decisions about rotations (EEK!).  As I struggled to get work done, my legs got worse, and even though I stayed up to ice, it didn't help much.

This morning, I got to campus around 9:45, but when I got to the weekly biology department brunch, all the coffee was gone (noooo!).**  I hung around for an hour or so, and then went to Molecular Bio discussion.  After that, we went to our weekly department seminar, and then A. and I headed over to do lab prep.  We're doing Hardy-Weinberg next week, which means ... plastic beads ALL over the place!  Woo.

After that, I went home for about an hour and a half before I went to physical therapy.  We varied up my exercises today, although I still did the majority of my regular ones.  The soft tissue massage was still excruciating, but I know it's necessary, and it definitely was shorter than it was last time.  I then went to meet up with a friend at a bar, but she couldn't find her ID, so I went home.  I've spent the night bumming around online because I have to elevate and ice my legs.  So no desk for me!

* And when I say freezing, I mean I've heard stories of people's lips turning blue.

** And I even brought my new coffee mug with the caffeine molecule on it!