Term has started

... and I'm trying to reorient myself in time, to figure out how to surf the strange new shapes of my days, to mark dissertations and read PhD proposals and secondary literature on John Donne and departmental strategic plans in the odd hour or two in between the adrenaline-high moments of classes and lectures and seminars.

So far it is not going brilliantly, I have to confess. I taught for three hours this morning (a seminar on Mrs Dalloway and the relationship between content/worldview and literary form 9-11am, then 11-12 a class on Dorothy Parker's 'Penelope' as a critique of the epic tradition, of twentieth-century bourgeois marriage, and/or as a response to the Odyssey). This year my students (so far) appear to be uniformly brilliant and motivated and thrilling, but frankly after three solid hours of teaching I would rather not be trying to do lots of little semi-creative tasks where I have to both pay attention to detail and engage my brain. But that's all I have on my to-do list for this week, except 'write conference paper', which is even less likely to happen just now--