Post-lecture drop

After too many years in this job, I feel like I have lectured about just about everything. This means I am used to be able to pull an old lecture out of the drawer, add some updated information, find some nifty links, spend some time on updating the examples, cutting what didnt work last year and adding something I hope will work this year.

This semester, so far all the lectures I have been giving have been new to me. And since I have gotten used to using my evergrowing archive of lectures while preparing, I have accepted all those little administrative things that needs to be done, you know.

I have to sit down at some point later and write about why teaching and administration are mutually excluding activities. Today I will just whine, because what reacts to this stress is my body. While I lecture, I am floating on a cloud of focus on the task and a certain amount of adrenalin. But afterwards I feel it all, and not just mentally. Yesterday I could barely walk from the pain in my hips and back, and when I settled with the lap-top in the afternoon to prepare for today's lecture, my son had to rescue me when I wanted to get up: I was unable to lift a Dell Latitude off my lap.

I don't know how to deal with this exhaustion. I know it is common, and lecturers I really admire share their own versions of it, but I need to find a way to deal with it. I can't keep this job unless I find a way to lecture without being a useless vegetable the rest of the day.