So I finally have a couple free hours and I'm so happy to be reading the forum....I apologize that I won't be able to comment on every post but I'm going to read as much as I can.

And you get to hear my long whiny rant (if you want to read it)! I'm having a tough spring semester. For the first time I'm teaching a really large class, with over 300 students. Everything about it is challenging me. I'm quite nervous about speaking in front of that many people, so I get all keyed up beforehand and afterwards I'm exhausted when the adrenaline wears off. Even though this is a college class the students can be surprisingly disruptive - people will talk to each other during class, and the room acoustics aren't great so these side conversations make it hard to hear in the room. I'm getting complaints from students about the noise, so I keep asking the class to quiet down so people can hear. Then there is the level of technology involved in giving the lectures, which are recorded, and communicating with the class about homework, grades, etc. I've had to learn several new computer systems for managing all this, and I'm spending hours and hours on all this annoying (to me) logistical computer stuff. Then there's the email! Some of it is totally valid and important (grading questions, questions about the material), and some of it is totally ridiculous (people who couldn't be bothered to do the homework on time, and no, I'm not going to let you skip the exam because your family wants you to come home for a long weekend). Keeping up with that takes a lot of time. I barely have time to actually interact with the students, which is the part I like. All together I'm spending more than 40 hours a week, and this is just for one class - it's only supposed to be 40% of my job. Keeping up with research and other work is a whole separate full-time job. I'm working 12-hour days and feeling like I am losing my mind.

I am forcing myself to take one day off each weekend so I have a bit of a break, but then trying to do something fun outdoors while also catching up on grocery shopping & laundry is exhausting. I absolutely refuse to skip exercising, so instead I'm getting less sleep. I keep not having time to eat during the day and getting really crabby and angry by the evening.

There's one interesting part of this that has surprised me - I've actually been enjoying style and picking out outfits more than ever during these few weeks. I thought that I would just retreat to my most basic standby outfits but instead I've been trying some new combinations that would have seemed a bit crazy to me even a few months ago. (I'll post some pictures for you soon, I promise!) I've been less insecure about whether what I'm wearing looks good, more confident in my style choices. In some ways I feel like not having much time has helped me stop agonizing about outfit choices - like the way I was worrying about what you all would think about my outfit - and just going for it. I feel like getting dressed is one of my favorite parts of the day now. That's my silver lining.

OK, so that is my whiny rant. Thanks for listening.