Chaos, i.e. students arrive!

So last week was my brief chance to (1) get up to speed on how things work at the paper and (2) come up with a plan for the class I teach. This week students arrived, and I suddenly became an expert and a teacher.

Here's the best description I could come up with for how things went this week:

Imagine you work with several teams of people to complete a project/task/product. Now imagine that it's the first day of work for everyone on those teams. And then imagine that this repeats itself every day of the week for a week. Of course add to that the fact that it's only your second week on the job and you can start to imagine the chaos.

Basically, as soon as I had a handle on the Monday teams, it was Tuesday and there was an entirely new crew. It also feels like as soon as I managed one crisis, I was hit with another.

While there is something energizing about working with students, especially the ones who are over-eager, I also had to realize that they are flaky 21-year-olds who are working for you for free. Of course, they have no hesitation in canceling a shift at the last minute.

All week, I've watched my days fly by and even forgotten to stop and eat. I work until the paper is done on Tuesdays, which was 12:30 a.m. this week, and even though I don't think I slept much, I was excited to get up and teach a class and be in the newsroom all day on Wednesday. I consider all of these things to be proof that this is a job I'm passionate about and that there was something missing before.

I'm still figuring out how to factor in life stuff and even a social life (when I find some friends) with all of this but that will come once I get past the craziness of the first few weeks.