Anticipating a New Semester

Here we are, a little over a week from the fist day of class. I. Am. Not. Ready.

There’s a lot I’m anticipating this time around. The baby started daycare on Tuesday and though I’ve been feeling for a while like I needed to return to work, in the days leading up to her first day I found that I wasn’t as ready as I thought. With the exception of a few days at a conference and a few days when my husband basically insisted that I leave the house, I’ve been with her nearly every minute of every day for 4.5 months. Until Tuesday, no one outside of the family had cared for her, even for a couple of hours. In the weeks leading up to this I decided – because she was clearly getting overtired – that she needed to be on a better nap schedule than she was and I instituted nap boot camp. It was a colossal failure and her nighttime sleep started to deteriorate. That may have just been the infamous 4-month sleep regression and thankfully her nighttime sleep has at least improved again, but we’re all now going into this (even more) chronically sleep deprived.

Beyond concrete logistical concerns like her care, there are a lot of less concrete things I’m growing more and more concerned about. This is my second year on the tenure track and I still have a lot to learn and a lot of adjusting to do. The course release I was on last year is over and – although I took a one-year tenure clock stop due to childbirth – there’s more pressure to produce scholarly work than I had last year. Imposter Syndrome is rearing it’s ugly head and I’m concerned that my castle of cards will start to crumble around me.

And with that thought, I have syllabi to finalize.