1st day

Ach, I forgot how exhausting teaching can be. I taught 4 classes today. I kept each one for an hour. I had half-hour breaks in between the 1st 3 and a 2-hr break before the 4th, and yet I was totally exhausted. It's partly the social exhaustion. I have to cajole and entreat the students to learn, to invest in the course. That's what today is all about. But it's also physical. My feet are cramping and my legs ache. I walked from HSS to Estabrook, but that honestly shouldn't have hurt. It didn't seem to hurt that much at the time, until it all hit me. Luckily I made it home before the crash. I hope my officemate is correct that I just need to get my stamina back.

It was fun, though. It's kind of a game, really. I try to learn their names and to be charming and all that. It's good if I can make them laugh. My 1st classroom should be amusing: there is a set of mirrors directly opposite where I stand. If it seems like I'm talking to myself, I probably am! I spent some time today admiring my hair. I pinned it behind my ears and it looked sort-of 1930s.

I'm not disliking teaching as much as I was last week, or even yesterday.

More vocabulary:

• arrogate: To claim and assume as a right that to which one is not entitled; to lay claim to and appropriate (a privilege, advantage, etc.) without just reason or through self-conceit, insolence, or haughtiness. To lay claim, without reason or through self-conceit, to the possession of (some excellence); to assert without foundation that one has; to assume. [Rom. Law., to adopt as a child)


• autarchy: Absolute sovereignty, despotism.


• interjacent: lying in-between