Workin 9 to 5

Following the trend of most things in my life of feast or famine, I have experienced a "feasting" of my work situations (yes, there is a plural). A few weeks ago, my boss at my primary research job asked me if I would be willing to go up to 40 hours a week (from my 30). Seeing that I am not teaching this quarter and that I really do love my boss and the research, I decided to accept and go up to 40 hours a week. The next day (and I'm not joking about this), Santa Clara contacts me about teaching a class for Spring quarter starting at the end of March for Intro to Sociology again. Fortunately, the time of the class is on Tuesday/Thursday 3:40-5:25 so I should be able to continue working 40 hours when that happens. My boss is very understanding if I need to go back down to 30 when that happens- there are some grant deadlines coming up and so she wants as much work done as possible. I think- at least for now- that it should be do-able (fingers crossed) since I have already taught the class before. I revised the syllabus and will be revising my lectures before classes even begin in an attempt to make things easier to cope with. But, we'll see :-)

To further complicate things even more, Santa Clara came back to me a few days later saying that they have an additional Social Problems class that they want me to teach that would happen right before my already scheduled intro class. This was a tough decision for me because I really love teaching, but I ultimately decided that even if I was back at 30 hours, there is no way that I could teach both classes and be able to complete all of the grading. As much as it pained me to do it, I have just stuck with one class which I know will still keep me busy enough :-)

I completed my first full week of working 40 hours in an office cube and . . . I survived. Friday at noon was pretty tough for me- I was SO ready to be done but I managed to switch gears from writing to coding, something that I enjoy more, and so I made it :-) While I might slightly whine about the increased amount of work, I truly am grateful for it as both jobs are things that I enjoy and are in the field I got my PhD in so I am VERY happy for these opportunities :-)