Sleeping Beauty

I'm very slow to wake. First thing in the morning, it's all I can do to move my body from the bed to the couch. That's a first step. I eventually get myself to my computer, check my e-mail, read a few blogs. My brain will wake, but I won't be ready to talk. It's like I live in a fort made of blankets. First thing in the morning, the blankets are at their fluffiest point of the day, and it takes a while to pat down all the fluff and see the outside world. This is the way it is every morning. Apparently, it's also how I'm going to start every semester.

Classes start this week. I teach for the first time today. I'm lecturing a class, and so I've spent the last week organizing the syllabus and attending an absolutely excruciating department orientation. (What is it about us that made them think they should read the orientation packet to us line by line? Have a group of PhDs and grad students not proved that their reading comprehension is just fine?) I've put together a powerpoint to go with the first lecture and made copies of the handout. I'm doing everything I should. Right now, though, it's like swimming through concrete. It's like crawling a terrific distance. I don't want to. Not because I won't enjoy it or I won't be good at it, but because I feel like I just woke up. I feel like Sleeping (ahem) Beauty, and someone just awoke me from a deep sleep and said, "Hurry! We have a mountain to climb!" Ugh. Couldn't I just ease into things?

I don't like it. I don't have anything brilliant to say about that, because my brain is sleepy and slow. I just know that one of the real down sides to a semester system is that it's very hard to consistently make a cold start. I'm not saying I'd give the summer back. No, thanks. I'd just rather it didn't end.