Update

Wow, I had a really rough couple of weeks for awhile there. I had some difficulty keeping up on teaching and spent a couple weeks where I was still scrambling to put together the lecture for the next day. I usually like to be done with the lecture so I can go over the materials and rehearse what I'm going to say. Needless to say, I had a couple of iffy teaching days and one real bad teaching day. I just went home that day instead of running a cortisol assay. That's also one reason why things have been difficult. I've been spending Tuesday and Thursday prepping for and/or running cortisol assays, which takes 5 or 6 hours. Ugh! I was getting so burnt out and I even skipped one of my own classes, which is turning out to be a disappointing class anyways. Ugh! I don't even want to go to that class anymore. Master's level classes really are a world apart from the Ph.D. coursework I've been used to. But, I have to take it to fulfill requirements.

I've been making progress on my comps projects and dissertation. I cut and pasted the introduction from the grant application I wrote last year. And then I wrote the methods section and the majority of the results section. I've been working with my Biology Prof to refine the methods section and cortisol results. He's been soo helpful. And I gave the draft of the paper to my Fav Prof to review.

I also obtained the data I'm going to use for my dissertation from one of the profs in another department. He's working on obtaining permission to use the data from the test publisher.

So things are going a little better. I'm giving my first test next week and I hope the students do well. Proctoring a test will also give me more time to get ahead on teaching.

I've also been doing some soul searching on teaching and what I want to do with my life. There was a time last semester when teaching was so aversive to me that I completely gave up the concept of becoming a professor. It was probably good for me to give that up because it helped me get through the semester. But, this semester, teaching has been going much better and I'm feeling like maybe I should consider becoming a professor once again. I know its a hard job, but I think it could be very rewarding and just the right thing for me to do with my life.