Three days until my last lecture.
Boy, I sure am crispy. Fried. Burnt out. It's been a good semester, but my brain is finished. When the last final is graded, I'm going to log some serious time watching the first season of Prison Break on DVD. Reading through the other academic blogs, I see that everyone else is nearing exhaustion. (Shout out to New Kid on the Hallway who has had a rough month.)
Question of the Day - What do you do when your brain is flat lining?
These days, I seem to go on another job interview... but not by choice.
I am 5 teaching days away from the end of the semester (6 including my one in-class final). I think I'll spend most of May in bed catching up on sleep.
Posted by: Chris Lawrence | April 25, 2007 at 12:46 AM
Dammit, we still have nearly a month left...
Posted by: Scott Lemieux | April 25, 2007 at 02:04 AM
Relax??? What's that?
I set up my terms so that I am over with the hard lifting by the last three weeks. Once I finish one more set of papers today, I'm on easy street with only 12 group projects, 10 presentations, 44 portfolios and 100-ish final exams to grade before May 17. :)
Posted by: WendyW | April 25, 2007 at 07:44 AM
When I'm flat-lined I somehow lose my ability to focus. And so I end up doing things like mindlessly flipping thru late-nite TV for, like, an hour. Or reading ridiculous garden tool catalogs.
I've also been known to suddenly decide the state of the kitchen is unacceptable, and throw out everything in the fridge.
Posted by: jen | April 25, 2007 at 10:32 AM
Read blogs or listen to the Yankees on the radio - a rather painful past time of late....
Posted by: Sam Crane | April 25, 2007 at 11:43 AM
"listen to the Yankees on radio..." is not a bit painful for the rest of us!
Posted by: dave s. | April 25, 2007 at 12:52 PM
Jeter has gotten seven errors already this season. What's up with that?
Posted by: laura | April 25, 2007 at 01:19 PM
Maybe there is some cosmic A-Rod good/Jeter bad equilibrium....
Posted by: Sam Crane | April 25, 2007 at 01:24 PM
I thought there was a cosmic A-Rod good/A-Rod's team bad equilibrium. I'm not sure why this happens to A-Rod, though.
Posted by: Dan Drezner | April 25, 2007 at 02:46 PM
Towards the end of every semester, I go into panic/triage/abandonment mode: I realize, with every passing day, that certain jobs I'd promised to accomplish and certain plan I'd determined to finish are looking increasingly unlikely, and I increase my pace and start throwing non-essential work overboard like mad. Then, there always comes a point where it's too late, it just won't get done no matter how much I focus, and I give him to despair. That's how I know I've flatlined, and that I need to go rent some old miniseries from the library and watch 13 hours of tv.
Posted by: Russell Arben Fox | April 26, 2007 at 01:01 AM
Surf. Which is what I'm doing now. I'm taking today as a down day, which I really need. I've been flat out for nearly four months.
Actually, I'm theoretically supposed to be cleaning the house, which hasn't been vacuumed in close to a month. With three cats and a dog made of velcro, it's not a pretty sight. So far, I've managed to pick up most of the toys strewn around the downstairs. Eventually, I'll probably lug the vacuum up from the basement and run it around the first floor.
Posted by: Mrs. Coulter | April 27, 2007 at 01:09 PM