This was a very long week: parent-teacher conferences. For what I believe is the first time, I was ablae to meet with all my students' parent(s) in the space of a few days, plus one other. I wasn't at school any later in the evening, but I did get up earlier so I could be at work before 7am. This was a minor inconvenience to me but it also involved putting out DH since we're still sharing cars with the boys. Just now it's the boys who get the cars during the week since I just stay at school all day. At least I get to drive on the weekends!
At any rate, we actually had two half-days of school so you might think I'd be feeling pretty good by the end of the week, but no. Today was our annual party day and that's a semi-fun but mostly boring day of supervising groups of children in various unstructured activities where they can get into trouble if left too long to their own devices. The day went well and the weather was perfect, but it just seemed interminable. At the end of the day we have a sort of "awards ceremony" to recognize the biggest fund-raisers, and if students donate a certain amount, they can put a whipped-cream "pie" in their teacher's face. The third grade teachers had very generous students this year and were basically covered in whipped cream by the end of it, but I got off easy. The one student in my class who met the donation requirement was a sweet girl who really didn't want to "pie" me, but I encouraged her to pick it iup and go for it. She barely touched me with it! I'm not complaining, though. It's not exactly my favorite thing!
I guess I'm used to this new thyroid dose? I feel... calmer, I guess? Less keyed up. Maybe I don't really know. I am able to get things done even at the end of the day, so that' s good.
One important lesson from this past week: last weekend I made up a to-do list and included estimates of how long I thought everything would take. I estimated 3 hours for grading my students' materials and procedures, when in reality it took at least 7 hours if not more. I knew I'd be getting up early every day and really didn't want to stay up late, but that's what happened, and I was a zombie the entire day on Monday. (Even so, I worked efficiently at school Monday and Tuesday, and finished everything I didn't get done over the weekend!) I realized that I'm much better off giving the students class time for these assignments on Monday and making them turn them in before they leave. This gives me an entire week to grade them, so I can spread the grading out and possibly still have something resembling a weekend. This week's project plan papers were due on Tuesday, and I've already graded one class set -- and since it was one of the classes destined for more comments, the others shouldn't take nearly as long. I hope!
It's a 3-day weekend and DD says she's coming to visit on Sunday, she's coming down with some friends. We're all thinking it's about 60-40 she'll show up; there are a few things she needs here, so she has incentive. I've invited her for a belated birthday lunch on Monday. I do hope we get to go.
I feel like I'm making progress on the work-life balance with this week's decison. We'll see how it goes.
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