I shouldn’t be writ­ing this. I should be doing my research. In fact, I want to do my research, even right now.

But there’s some thing else nag­ging me, some­thing I can’t seem to get out of my head this quar­ter. I have this over­rid­ing sense of guilt that despite all of the efforts I make to be a pas­sion­ate, engaged, and thought­ful teacher, it’s not enough. I see signs of this every day when my stu­dents express con­fu­sion, frus­tra­tion, and anx­i­ety about the things I say, the assign­ments I give, and the dead­lines I set. I’m doing this to them. I’m the one caus­ing their pain and suf­fer­ing, their sleep­less nights. Did they really con­sent to this? What gives me the right?

Of course, these thoughts are mostly silly. Of course they con­sented to this: they know what school is. I might see glimpses of con­fu­sion and frus­tra­tion, but I also see class­rooms full of nod­ding, laugh­ter, under­stand­ing and excite­ment. I see them strug­gling, over­com­ing, and ulti­mately learn­ing as they jump through the hoops I design. I may be caus­ing them acute sleep depra­va­tion, but I’m help­ing them con­vert exhaus­tion into invalu­able knowl­edge and skills. Right?

I think so. But watch­ing my stu­dents go through such tur­bu­lent emo­tional states is still such a vis­ceral expe­ri­ence for me, it’s felt much more crit­i­cal and imme­di­ate in the past six months than the research goals I have for this year. Sum­mer quar­ter will be a nice reprieve, a three month from hia­tus from the con­stant trade­off between excel­lent teach­ing and excel­lent research.

Actu­ally, make that two months and three weeks. I have a new course to design for the fall and I don’t know how to half-ass it!