It’s a completely gray day outside today – it’s 9:00 in the morning and we’re still flying with full lights. Even the sunroom requires lights, which happens very rarely at this hour of the morning, no matter what the season. It’s the kind of day when it seems like, if you were a traveler in a forest, the trees might close menacingly in around you, in a Young Goodman Brown kind of way.

And I’m exhausted. I’m physically exhausted, because I managed a ten-mile bike ride yesterday for the first time in months, it seems. Biking makes me really tired, and I love biking-tired. I love the complete and utter surrender to sleep on the nights I ride. But it also really increases the amount of sleep I need. It’s a good thing I can only manage to ride every now and again, or I’d be sleeping half my life away.

But more than that, I’m mentally exhausted. When I tot everything up, it’s been a rough week. I had another painful classroom experience yesterday that I don’t know how to frame . . . the short version is, I set up chats for my students to do yesterday while we were in class, and one of the three groups started talking about the class instead of the topic . . . you must understand that I feel really bad about this, and so it’s hard to talk about. I think when I go back and re-read the log, I’ll feel better; I’ll find the parts of the discussion I overlooked, and I’ll feel less threatened by it all because I’ll be able to better put it in perspective. (In fact, I think I’m there now . . . writing it all out really helps.)

One of the nice things about this group of students is that when things go egregiously wrong, the part that’s not my fault is so obvious that, once I’m over the initial shock, I can usually find a way to think about the incident in useful ways. This incident was particularly shocking because it occurred online, though . . . surprisingly, I don’t have norms for chat, because I’ve never been in a position to use it before. I’ve had things go awry in email, so now I know what boundaries to set with email; I’ve had things go awry on discussion boards, and now I know what to do there; and similarly, I’ve got some norms for web pages themselves. But not chat . . . yet.

And so I’m feeling really battered at the moment, and I wish I could stay home. Instead, I have to go in for a New Faculty Luncheon and make nice with the dean, who by all accounts is odious . . . and then go to a teaching excellence committee meeting on this day when I’m feeling somewhat less than excellent . . . sigh . . . the luncheon is at the Radisson; here’s hoping the food is a cut above the usual fare. And here’s hoping the teaching committee recharges my batteries . . .