Tomorrow is the last day with my special summer class – I can’t believe the four weeks have gone by so quickly.  I’m in the midst of grading their final papers, and I keep catching myself thinking how fabulous they are both as individuals and as a group, as students and as people, and how I wish all of my classes were like them.

Either it’s the extra chunk of salary this class is putting in my bank account or these are just genuinely great kids, I don’t know. I do know that they have surprised me over and over again this term – mostly in good ways.  There were a couple of unpleasant surprises, like the three (THREE!) students who failed to turn in a final paper today or the two students who, despite lengthy comments on their paper and helpful conferences with me, did not revise their papers beyond simple proofreading.  Those surprises weren’t so great, but I can’t expect any class (not even this class) to be perfect (not even when they’re this close).

They’ve brought energy and enthusiasm to the classroom every single day, even at the godforsaken hour of 8:00 in the morning.  Not one single time have they failed to chorus happily “GOOD MORNING DR. VAGUE” when I come in the door. The excitement in the room is palpable, bringing me back to how I felt the summer before my freshman year of college, when the world was still undefined, waiting to unfold and lay itself out in front of me like an unfinished map. Their writing has been miles away from the remedial level I’d been led to expect – they’ve written with heart, humor, consideration, trust, bravery, and mostly good grammar.

They’re registering for fall classes right now, and by the time I see them in my classroom again (assuming I will), they’ll be managing several other courses, activities, student groups, new roommates and relationships, dorm cafeteria food, and all the other distractions of freshman year.  Will they retain their cheerful good humor or will they become part of the disgruntled mass of tired and distracted students who “just don’t see the point” of a required literature sequence? Please, please don’t let it be the latter.  I just couldn’t stand it.

It’s Sunday night, and usually on a Sunday night I am cursing the heavens and shaking my fist in anger at the prospect of the coming Monday morning (and the lingering consequences of Saturday night).  Sunday never seems to count as part of the weekend.  Sure, it’s technically a weekend day and some religions even go so far as designating it a “day of rest,” but let’s face it: Sundays are far from restful.

This evening, however, I think I feel a little rest coming on and I don’t know what to do with myself.  I’ve been stressing about this coming week for a while (it involves the frantic finishing of one course and the nervous beginning of another), but I think that for once in my life I have managed to turn my stress into positive energy: I actually finished (almost) all my prep and grading yesterday, a fact which I can barely believe.  Today all I had to do was grade a handful of papers and email the grades to our program coordinator. Done! And! DONE!

I can barely believe the freedom I feel, settling in for the evening with no chores weighing over my head! I.. well.. I think I kind of like this feeling. I think I could get used to it.  The palpable lack of anxiety is a rare treat; I tell you.

It seems the whole early-to-bed, early-to-work, frequently-to-the-gym schedule I have been doing the past month has given me ridiculous amounts of energy.  It’s kind of sick, really, that I feel so wrong when I don’t get to the gym. I’m embarrassed to tell you that I can rarely even enjoy a nap on the couch with the dog on my belly and the gentle, comforting hum of the television in the background.  I used to love that! SOB!

There’s only one problem: I have this whole evening of freedom and no more desire or ability to laze on the couch like a no-’count ne’er-do-well, so what should I do with my time? Even if it were feasible to spend the evening with a bottle of fine small-batch Kentucky Bourbon (i.e. if it were not a school night), I don’t even have much desire to do that anymore. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM. This whole healthy and virtuous living thing is so confusing. I suppose I will go read a book. Stupid books.

P.S. Did the title of this post remind you of this? I really hope it did.

Dear Bag of Discount Spinach,

When I saw you in the produce section, neon yellow tag proclaiming that you were a rare and sought-after 99-cent manager’s special, I snatched you from the cooler with a quickness.  As I held you up to the light, inspecting your slightly wilted leaves, I looked upon you with the eyes of a hopeful lover.

I saw the good in you; I saw the fresh, beautiful, dark green leaves hiding among the wilted and slimy ones.  I saw your flaws, but with the naïveté I’ve often been known to exhibit, I thought I could change you. I thought I could save you.

Fine, I’ll admit I then forgot about you for a few days and I’m sorry for that.  Those nights spent alone and neglected in the depths of my crisper drawer must have been hellish. You must have felt so lost and alone as I passed over you time and time again in search of other foods.  But when I remembered you again, Discount Spinach, I tried! I really tried to make up for my neglect.

We spent so much time together then, you and I. Tonight, my arms sunk within your verdant depths, I sought out only the best in you.  I carefully extracted each leaf from within your plastic cloak, painstakingly separating the soggy scraps of rotten leaves from the healthy ones. When I had finished exploring every inch of you,  I observed with great sadness that only a fraction of your former glory remained. The bad leaves outnumbered the good; you had succumbed to a cold and lonely demise.

Was the money I saved by buying a huge bag of discount spinach worth the pain? Not only the pain I caused you, but (let’s face it, more importantly) the pain I suffered by having rotten spinach leaves clinging to my arms during the lengthy salvage mission I was forced to undertake? No. No it wasn’t.

Yours in Iron and Calcium,  but not in Decomposition,

AV

Too many things are annoying me today – most of them are small (had to request my drink be re-made at the coffee shop¹, previously acceptable social plans were altered to be made less acceptable, etc.) and should therefore not really bother me, but I think I have reached some sort of saturation point where I am both in the final few sessions of my first summer class and also in the final few days before my second summer class² and thus in the throes of inadequately finishing one while inadequately preparing for the other and it is making me a little on edge, shall we say, and if the length of this sentence is any indication I am nearing some sort of ominous scheduling-related brink.

¹On the subject of that coffee-shop request, please allow me to tell you why this is infuriating to me.  I always request my iced coffee the same way: with soy milk.  “Iced coffee with soy,” I always say.  The cashier indicates this by scrawling a letter “S” in the “Milk” field on the plastic cup, which the barista then interprets, time after time, not as “soy” but as “sweetened.”  I am forever being served black, sweetened iced coffee when what I wanted was unsweetened iced coffee with some goddamn SOY MILK.  I mean Starbucksⁱ is one of the few places in this godforsaken sown where they actually serve soy products; the least they could do is, you know, actually serve it.

ⁱDon’t even start with me on the subject of Starbucks.  We in New Wye are lucky to have even that.  It’s not like Zembla, where a person in need is never more than arm’s reach from a coffee shop, coffee bar, coffee cart, or coffee kiosk.  Lord knows it is not like Zembla.

²Awesomely, these two classes actually overlap for a week.  Won’t that be a thrill? This unusual overlap was not only the source of my payroll problems but also, at least tangentially, the source of faulty assumptions in social event planning.  Everyone thinks I’ll be off when I will in fact be not only working that week but working double duty.  I could explain all this but why? Explaining it has not proved useful once yet this summer.

And how are you? Do you have any rants you’d like to share?

In lieu of an actually thoughtful post on any of these subjects, here is a list of discoveries I have recently made:

• Everything tastes better with spinach (not, in fact, bacon, as others have argued).

• Getting 7-8 hours of sleep and exercising regularly makes me into a much, much happier person and makes the world into a much, much more reasonable place to live.

• I am not compatible with the weather in my part of the country at all, and should devote as much energy as possible to finding a job somewhere that is else.

• My students can inspire me in completely unexpected ways, just when I really need them to.

• Finally, on a more pedestrian level, there is a paper towel roll holder in my kitchen — the kitchen in the apartment where I have been living for two years! — that I only last week discovered.

Tell me, have you learned anything new lately?