Scheduling woes

I am having a hard time adjusting to my teaching schedule this term. Okay, no, I'm doing fine; I get to all of my classes, and I even manage to be ready for them. So, that's all fine, but I don't like teaching sort of every other hour in the first half of the day. That's not long enough to do much in between (e.g., hold office hours), and it means that what used to be a lunch hour is now a teaching hour.

I had formed the habit of reading for relaxation over lunch because I function better when I do something like that in the middle of the day, but when I'm scrambling to eat a little mini-lunch before class and maybe another one after class, I never do any leisure reading. This isn't the end of the world, but I had really enjoyed being able to make progress at least through, say, frivolous but cosy mystery novels during the school year. That doesn't look so likely this term, though I am not quite ready to give up hope.

The other problem with having smaller gaps between classes is that I have to work a little more consciously in order to get a sufficient amount of food at sufficiently close intervals. One of the early signs of low blood sugar for me is that I struggle to find words for even fairly basic concepts. Another is that I sometimes mix up parts of my sentences. A few weeks ago, I said this at a moment of waning energy: "Oh, look, they have painted trains that you can wood." Well, almost. You can see that neither of these effects would be desirable in a classroom setting.

I have also had to schedule some office hours on non-teaching days in order to avoid what I fear would be uselessly small segments of time in between classes, particularly by the time I allow for at least a brief lunchtime. (Remember that I need to eat fairly regularly.) This addition of office hours to a non-teaching day may actually be good for students, who may or may not find it convenient for all of my office hours to be held on the same days as my classes, but it does mean that I sometimes forget that I'm going to need to be in my office on a non-teaching day. Luckily, my habit is to work out of my office every day, so I have yet to miss office hours, other than while I was hiding at home yesterday, trying to sleep off a bug. The big victory is that I remembered to phone and ask the departmental secretary to put a sign on my door to warn any would-be visitors.

So, I'm still battling to find the rhythm of my week this term. I look forward to the time when (I trust) it will no longer be a battle.