Reality Check: Working Life.

So I'm pretty much working 9-4 TAing [going to lectures on topological quantum field theory over lunch hours] and then going to a lectures until 6. And somehow I'm supposed to go home after that and work solid for several hours on math. It isn't happening: after work I go home and work for an hour and then kill my brain for several more and sleep.

Headaches: the first three hours are calculus, which isn't so bad. All I have to do is TA for them [which just involves leading simply problem sessions] and the professor, a Harvard man, realizes they don't know jack and gives them really easy things to do. But the second three hours is teaching old fogeys how to program in Java. It's like trying to raise the dead. Some of them don't know how to use a mouse. I admit, some aspects of the "Hello World" program aren't quite transparent, the whole "public class ..." blah blah blah stuff is just nonsense to these people, but it isn't that hard to just take it on faith and copy it out of the course notes. Of course, it isn't helpful that I really don't know my way around Linux and have no clue how to do Java, but it won't become relevant.

So after getting home, making dinner, and surfing the internet for half an hour, I took a nap and then it was 10pm. Forget doing anything productive after work, man. I can foresee doing light reading and wasting time in my future with very little Mathematical Science...

Why on earth would somebody who doesn't know how to use a mouse want to learn very very elementary Java?

Further Reality Checks: Don't worry kids, I haven't been kissing much lately other than priestly hands and pictures of dead people I never knew. And, frankly, I foresee a sharp decrease in priestly-hand-kissing with the arrival of the brand new shiny deacon, since you don't kiss a deacon's hand and now I give most of the things [most commonly the censer] to him instead of the priest.

EDIT: Oh foo, if I didn't have work all day, I could help a new priest move into his new house in the neighborhood on Thursday [that's right kiddies, another priest in the Hyde Park area]. Curse you, calculus class!