My Weird Brain

So, I'm teaching three classes this semester.

If you are thinking, "RYAN YOU ARE CRAZY BECAUSE YOU WORK UPWARDS OF FIFTY HOURS A WEEK AND TEACH THREE CLASSES", you are certainly not wrong. I think that to myself about three times a day.

They're all pretty straightforward though, and they're RIGHT in my wheelhouse as a counselor, so I feel like I've got a good amount of knowledge to impart and it's pretty great.

There is this one class though. It's a full-semester class, and it's taught entirely online. I'm teaching the very first online iteration of this class, and its start was stressful because I had just shy of three weeks to read the entire textbook and develop the entire course, all in my first month of my promotion at work, so it was a stressful time.

Regardless, I do my grading on weekends. That's literally the only time I have to do it. I could do some on Mondays (and I do for my hybrid class), but it's largely weekends. It takes me about six hours total to do all of my grading for these three classes, so it's not a huge time commitment. The reason that I'm thinking about this is that taking on the hybrid class that I am currently teaching started in a similar way (I was asked at the last minute, and had a VERY short amount of time to develop my syllabus and cram an entire textbook into my already largely occupied brain), and I'm noticing a pattern.

I have started to avoid grading for these two classes specifically. For my other class, I'm all over it. But these two classes are difficult for me to get motivated.

It started innocently enough. I was like "eh, all this can wait until Sunday" one week, and while I did it, I stressed about it. a lot. And I stress about it every week. In reflecting on it, I can find no discernable reason - the students are meeting the expectations consistently, they're working in the ways that I want them to - they're bringing their A games, even. But I have the yips about these two classes. So I stress, I procrastinate, I avoid...and then everything's fine when I sit down and actually do the grading. What I have been able to determine is that I'm stressed about grading these two classes because the start was stressful. But knowing that doesn't stop my brain from trying to avoid.

I'm such a weirdo.