In March, I was worried about getting work back at home. Instead, I got a second job while still in Belfast. Now, I'm worried that I will lose my sanity.
I work around seventy hours each week. I have so much to do at all times of every day of the week and weekend that sometimes I forget really obvious things....like how old I am, how to construct a sentence, and how I never ate supper last night or the night before that or the night before that. Thank God for rice cakes and peanut butter - and crackers and cheese!
My second job is an online teaching job for a university in North Dakota. Getting the job proved easy enough. Executing the job has been a nightmare.
In the first place, Northern Ireland's libraries are a disgrace. If my class was on Irish Studies, I'd be in the clear, but my class falls squarely within the Catholic Studies department, which does not appear to be of much interest in Northern Ireland except for Cardinal O Fiaich's library in Armagh in the reference section. So, I had to buy all except one of the books, one of which came all the way from the States! Talk about irony! That took a long time to sort out, a longer time to read, and an even longer time to incorporate into a workable syllabus. At least, that's how it seemed.
Then the class began.
The students are non traditional students, who also have full time jobs that distract them from the coursework (just like me). I imagine they would be a mighty crowd to have in a room for proper discussions, but reigning them in and making them keep on task and follow $%#@ing directions in cyberspace is almost impossible. I know they're all interesting, good-hearted, well-intentioned people, but my head is melted.
Somehow, in all of this, I've taken up running.
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