Pledging my Time

I've spent most of my life thus far being a student, and as a student I used to think a lot about the things I would never do when I grew up and became a teacher. I never actually had any intentions of becoming a teacher, but I had the "I will never" thoughts and, well, here I am. I've forgotten most of what I swore I'd never do when I became the teacher I never planned to be; and I'm sure I do a lot of whatever those things were. One thing I've stuck to, though, is never ending class late. For one thing, everyone just stops paying attention if you go over time. I always used to, anyway. But more important, it's presumptuous and rude. (My current students may deserve to be treated rudely, but that's beside the point.) People are busy, and even if they're not surely they have better things to do than listen to me blab about statistics during time that wasn't allocated to me. And I have better things to do. I don't want to lecture about p-values for any longer than I have to. (Am I in the wrong job? I just don't know.)

Which is why it really irritates me that the class immediately before my afternoon class always runs late, making mine start late. Doesn't that professor want a break the way I always do after two hours of teaching? Then I have to rush through things in order to end on time. I get to feel all holier than thou for not continuing a vicious cycle of classes ending late, but this particular high moral ground doesn't do much for me.

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I just finished listening to Blonde on Blonde in its entirety. My god what a good album. And you know what the thing of it is? I don't even think it's Bob Dylan's best album. But it was exactly what I wanted to hear about an hour ago, and it brought me joy. Joy. Really, it's that good.