Acclimation

As much as I enjoy teaching, it generally is a source of significant anxiety. Everyone says it gets easier with time ... and I think my time has come. Today is the first day of classes for me and here are the signs that I'm adjusting to this role:

• I had no problems sleeping last night. (I usually lie awake thinking of all the things I have to do to get ready for class and obsessing over every possible detail.)


• Three hours before my first class of the semester and I have not once looked at my notes or syllabus. (I will before class starts, but the fact that I haven't been doing it all day long is a good sign.)


• I'm not obsessing over what I'll say in class five weeks from now. This was the worst part of the anxiety problem -- it was never ending. This is the advantage of not teaching courses for the first time. This semester I'm teaching both classes for the second time. I still tweaked a lot of the material, but in general I know what to expect and how the class will go.


• I'm wearing jeans on the first day. While I never dress up for class, I generally adopt business-casual attire for teaching. It helps me feel the role and establish authority for undergraduate classes. This semester I'm only teaching grad students so I lost that justification. There are also some interesting gendered norms about professional attire in academia that I'm rebelling against. (Perhaps there will be a longer post on that subject later.) And, truth be told, I really just like jeans.


• I'm also wearing sandals. While I've done this all summer long, I've never done it while teaching. Again, it's a level of informality that I don't typically embrace, but it seems okay today. (A friend of mind thinks that it is only acceptable to wear open-toed shoes for business occasions if your toes are painted, so I should report that I have met that requirement. Another interesting gendered norm that I may comment on later.)