thursday and i'm tired and it's dark. just finished teaching, feeling all abuzz, workshopping my performance in my head as i climb the stairs from the quad to the library. a guy next to me grumbles: "too many stairs. 108." i'm impressed that he has counted them - the stairs i climb on most days. he tells me it's due to boredom.
it's a nice interruption to my thoughts. we part ways. i climb more stairs towards my desk. i count 43. that's 151 steps on my journey to this desk, chair, computer, headspace.
is each one a step or a stair? it seems it's a step, a stair being the entire block of steps. well that's what one dictionary tells me. and now i can't remember if he said steps or stairs. i may have misquoted. ah, technicalities. it's been an afternoon of those.
we talked about religions: islamic, christian and jewish. too much time spent on clarifying distinctions between them. and then a slightly dodgy discussion on Islamic 'veiling' practices. and then time was up before i fully redeemed the conversation. or maybe that's not my job anyway. sigh. why the fuck am i teaching this, stressing about this, reading up on this? i sometimes forget i'm just a lowly tutor. give me my money so i can go and get pissed. oh yeah, i'm supposed to be writing a thesis. all the more reason to get pissed.
and now i have 2 weeks without classes and readings and marking. 2 weeks of thesis-only, of making up for the last 3 weeks of not writing very much. it all starts tomorrow. 151 steps a day.
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