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.

The ultimate complement or the ultimate insult?

I was speaking to an attorney last night who works at the law firm where I once worked. He was with two other people (“I came to the reception with my family” he tells me) and I quickly realized that the young man was his son who was currently an undergrad and aspiring to be a lawyer someday. The other, a woman, said “I’m Y and I am the non-lawyer here, I teach dance.” I was about to say “and I assume the two of you aren't the parents here?” [Because there were some little tikes running around, belonging to some young couple, but typically, a college guy was not going to be the dad, even if he did marry early.] My Q was preempted by her next comment. She said “…and my kids, of course keep me busy, though X here (pointing to the college guy) is pretty much on his own by now.”

Whom would I have embarrassed more – the son, in an Oedipal sort of way, for my suggesting that his mother was his wife? The mother, for linking her romantically with her own son? Or myself for being so clueless as to the approximate age of a person?