That’s how tired I am. I’m close to the end, I can almost see it, and boy am I glad. This really wasn’t my best semester, and I am excited for the new year and another chance to do better the things I felt I didn’t do well this time around. It’s one of the things I love about academia — the calendar: you can start fresh at least twice a year and in at least one class. I try to switch things up and teach classes I’ve taught before plus at least one new one. My life may be nuts, but I am never bored.

And Red Bull tastes like crap. Really, it does. It had better work, too. This stuff ain’t cheap.

This will be my 20th move, counting every time I have moved from one place of residence to another, even in the same city. A move is a move and although cross-country is more of a marathon while short moves are like sprints, I am spending another month purging and packing, working around and across boxes and wrapped furniture. Chris has been a god, doing much of the work while I was out of town and now, as I grade papers and projects and exams.

I’m excited about the new place, I always am, but I am tired of moving. Yet, in this economy and world, I can’t imagine being able to save the thousands a down payment would take for a house, not in New Jersey. The median house in Montclair is well over $400,000 and Chris and I together don’t make the median income. I know this is true for so many others, too. We work good jobs, that pay well but not spectacularly well — and I never intended it to. But I also thought being a professor would be enough to guarantee financial survival — and now that I am really untangling my finances and seeing what things cost — the world has changed. There’s a bigger gap between those who can afford a house and those who can’t — and that gap is being crossed by second mortgages and other, additional kinds of debt.

The goals our parents attained now take more money than ever before. Even as we work harder and harder. I won’t trade my job for anything — but I definitely am beginning to think about money and spending very differently as a result. I’m also seeing what this growing gap between the truly wealthy and the rest of us is coming to mean.

I was just reading the NYT online and they have a new mac and pc ad and I love those — you should check it out — but what was interesting was that pieces of the ad are located in different spots on the front page. Of the New York Times. Which looks like it even changed their heading to fit the ad — so all things must be for sale at the right price. Even the paper once known (still known to some I would imagine) as the old gray lady.

My semester is far from over, but I have come to that point where you reflect on it — even as I finish grading and Chris and I pack for a New Year’s Eve and day move. This was not one of my better semesters — even when you compare it against the semester I was collecting data from my dissertation and had just separated from my now ex-husband. It all comes down to one simple thing — the bedrock by which you build your life. I love to teach and do research; I like to be busy; I like juggling all my professional requirements and still finding time to spend with Chris and Willa and Naima, and I put a lot of value in the time I can spend with family and friends. But you have to have a bedrock to build all those things on and after the very first weeks in the semester, I didn’t have it. I got very sick and that just wipes the slate clean, doesn’t it? I am so impressed with the student I had this semester who delivered a baby and still finished out the course. I couldn’t do it — for more than a week, I couldn’t even really leave the house.

Thank God for the internet and for understanding students, who were willing to be forgiving as I am still building that bedrock up, stone by stone. I’ve heard said that everyone has a bad semester on their way to tenure and I knock wood that this one was mine. It could have been a lot worse, and all in all, I saw many of my students reach new heights and win some real triumphs. I am behind on my writing, the conference wasn’t great, and sometimes I get discouraged, but then I have the students who really care — and there are many more of them than not — and they keep coming, showing up, willing to learn and excited about teaching.

I guess I realized about myself that I need to be at a place that values and requires teaching, because it’s anything I can do to teach better, learn more, and contribute research that makes a difference in their lives that gets me up in the morning. God help me if I had been an accountant (no offense to the many family and friends I have who are) and I might not have left my pajamas for the rest of the semester : )

I was lucky and blessed. I got the right doctors and a new path.  The migraines are much improved, and I had all but given up hope that would ever be the case. Maybe now the bedrock is even better and more solid. 2008, here I come!

Don’t plan to move at the end of the semester. Particularly the end of the fall semester, when you have holidays, candidates for hires coming, exams and projects, a conference, more holidays, did I mention student projects?

I have left my blog woefully unattended, I know. It was more of a triage situation, really. Don’t worry, as is usually the case this time of year, I am here, but too busy to reflect on all of the things happening — and writing is always a form of reflection, where you slow down and write about the things that have been happening and that are on the horizon.

More to come, and happy holidays to you each and everyone.