You can always tell when the semester is starting to be a burden when I start responding to various people's/students'/administrators' comments and queries by singing Smiths lyrics: there's just something perfectly wry and campy and ironic and self-mocking all in one that gets at my need to pity myself. (I --- usually --- don't respond to student inanities by singing these out loud, but, hey, maybe doing that would improve the situation.)
But at a certain point, ironic mockery just doesn't cut it. I'm actually having a pretty good week, considering, but from what I am reading from fellow academics indicates that the time has come for full-on wallowing melodrama:
Yeah, when I wallow in self-pity, I don't mess around.
Sometimes it involves leaping around the room singing this at the top of my lungs while flinging myself in ridiculously tortured flamboyant poses, sometimes it only involves me whispering in response to a student's inanity, "it's been ten weeks, feels like ninety." Sometimes it involves me stacking up my ungraded essays into a bonfire and casting myself, arms outstretched, upon them.
So for those of you who've hit that point in the semester, and you know who you are, this one's for you.
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