Going Halvsies

Next week is Independence Day, which marks our nation's birthday and the traditional "halfway" point of summer.  I could count out days and check out how accurate this tradition is, but let's face it, that would take time and brain cells (not much of either, but still more than I have to spare at the moment).  I know the trope about teachers and summers off, but I'm still waiting for when in my teaching career I'll have a summer off.  I had a decent portion of the month of May off while my son still had classes and I had some time after exams and final grades had been turned in for the spring semester.  Of course, that time was spent preparing a manuscript for publication and preparing my summer class materials.

Once the boy is out of school every summer, I start the fun of splitting time between parenting and teaching without any down time.  It's less effective this way, with the thousand and one questions, requests, and interruptions that come with a child, but as an adjunct it's not as if I have big bucks to spend on camps, day care, and babysitters so we make do.  On the positive side, he gets to be involved with my class preparations so we try out fun things for lab- making a model of a muscle filament, doing exercises and naming the actions, muscles, and joints involved, and testing reflexes for a few ideas.  He's also involved with my students and I on our summer research projects, which you can check out over here.  We're having a great time with that, chaotic and topsy-turvy as it is.

One thing that is for-sure at the halfway point is my summer classes.  I did manage to secure a handful of weeks of inexpensive but good day camp stuff for Kenny thanks to the Kent Parks and Recreation department and a gift from my mom, so that's helping to give me some time to deal with class prep, grading, and starting to think about autumn classes (not to mention the perpetual job hunt for a full time teaching job).

I'd love to be half way through my summer break.  Heck, I'd love to have half of a summer break.  But I guess I went into the wrong profession, or at least at the wrong time.

Whatever.  I love my job, I love my students, I love our research.  Maybe someday soon the US will again love education even a tiny bit.  Until then, us teachers will just keep toiling on over summer break to do the best that we can this and every day of the year.