Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Back to School (January edition)

Today marked the first "normal" day of class in just over three weeks; just enough time to have gotten out of the school routine and into a vacation routine. Though I always cherish the time of rest and relaxation, each year I cannot help but worry about what it will take to get back into the routine.

At the end of the day today, I realized something: vacation doesn't upset the routine, it revitalizes it. I came back more energetic and genki in front of the classroom than I had been in months. I don't think my teaching style comes across as sluggish when I am tired, but I'll admit that by December, I'd lost the spark that I'd had at the start of the year; that me being energetic on December 13 was but a pale imitation of me being energetic on August 25. Today, I felt like I had recaptured that energy and with it, a significant amount of joy in what I do.

So, realizing this; recognizing this energy level as optimal and also recognizing that I will, at some point, get tired, how do I maintain and nurture this energy for as long as possible? How should I best care for myself so that I do not exhaust quite as quickly or drastically as I did first semester? I don't have an answer--I'm just posing the question to myself and also to anyone who happens to read this who might have ideas.

2 comments:

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  2. Me too; I'm facing the same problem since last year. Whenever I fall into a routine, I helplessly experience an unavoidable energy atrophy. But for starters, to keep each day as fresh as the previous one, I strongly recommend to keep to your running resolution--at least that's how I keepy sanity. And then take a big nap (or just sleep early and wake early). Physically, I don't know--I'm still experimeting methods to find the path of an interminable stamina, but I guess I'd find reality soon. Hey, you're the older one so you should know more than I do!

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