A prof’s crisis (it was not my fault!)

I am, I admit, rather a last minute person. I want to work ahead, but more often than not I prepare classes in the amount of time it takes, right before the class itself. If I need 10 hours to write up lecture notes, I will do it 10 waking hours prior to class. Risky? Not really. I give myself generous amounts of time so in case a tooth falls out and I have to detour to the dentist – I can accommodate that.

But I cannot accommodate what happened today.

I was to give lectures for three hours this morning, tomorrow morning, and Wednesday morning to the 30 foreign attorneys attending the Summer Program at the Law School. It is the first time that I’ve been asked to teach in the Program and so brand new lectures needed to be produced. By 6 am this morning, the first one was ready (yes, yes, a significant portion was written just yesterday).

I walk into the Law Building at a leisurely pace (I have an hour to spare! I am cool!), pick up my mail, leaf through it, think about reading blogs when suddenly, RED ALERT!! What’s this? A schedule of the Program that has me in addition slated to teach this afternoon?? Several more hours of lectures to give TODAY??

Naturally, I assumed that it was my fault, my oversight. But mostly I assumed that I would die of a heart attack and that would be that. Because I don’t HAVE my next set of lecture notes. Those were supposed to be generated this afternoon and evening.

In control, in control! Where is that Polish grit? I can do this!

I used every spare second, every bathroom break (for them – no such luxury for me – the caffeine and water had to stay in me until the ordeal was done with), the lunch hour, to produce the next batch of notes.

I never taught with such passion before. Passion replaced fear. Have you ever heard anyone pace and rave about the beautiful complexities of the Common Law tradition? Give spectacular examples of statutory interpretation? That was me! Brilliant it was not, but I doubt they noticed – they were too shocked that anyone would CARE that much about the law. (In fact, today I only cared about surviving.)

Two postscripts:
1. When I got home I retrieved the original schedule and noted that I WAS RIGHT! I hadn’t been in the original program for the afternoon. Small consolation.
2. I also noticed that I had neglected to remove the laundry tag from the back of my skirt and so the attorneys must now think that American profs wear red tags pinned to their clothes for decoration.

What a day.