Wednesdays are always sort of a litmus test for my week. If sessions go well, it bodes well for Friday sessions. Today’s only went so/so, and I’m not entirely sure how to fix it. The material we’re going over is really technical and not particularly exciting, so I’m really just reviewing things that happened with the homeworks last week and how those went. Sadly, I think the kids who come to session really do get the swing of things by the end, but when sessions are that boring and tedious no one really wants to come. I only had maybe 15 kids today, instead of the usual 20-25, and even my most participation-happy girls were a little moribund. I even had silly Samoan music to play to kick the start off, but everyone seemed so surly about the topic in general it didn’t help any. I think the groupwork last week helped, but I’m just not sure how you do this stuff in groups. Oh well.
Also put all my reading to get done for next week in my beloved Tasque (via my also very beloved Remember the Milk) and it’s looking a little dismal this week. Graduate school is great, and the other night I think I put it to Lewis pretty well. It’s all about it being 10:00 on a weekday, and you feeling exhausted in every cell of your body. And this exhaustion is itself somewhat uplifting, because you feel like you’ve faught a hard and worthy battle and given it all your best. It’s not the same exhausting as working the regular 9-to-5. So much of my day is self-determined, and there’s no real external repercussions for whether I perform well or not. I guess what it comes down to is that no one works myself harder than me, and when you pick the ways in which you work yourself, you don’t waste a lot of time doing stuff you don’t think it worthwhile.
I guess that should be a lesson to myself. I could work harder at this TA thing. I think I can figure out how to make it more entertaining while still being informative and practice-centric. And at the end of the day… it’s the working hard that matters between me and myself. Whew. This whole grad school thing is a little less like fun-fun going to school times, and more like an interminable endurance race. Keep hitting those mile markers, and this quarter will be over with some measure of success. And several thousand mile markers later, I come out somewhere with a PhD. Right?