Random Thoughts on the Past Two Weeks

As I sit here typing, I'm listening to the rain outside.  It's been raining off and on all day today, and it's such a strange sensation to see and hear the rain fall on our snowdrifts outside.  We've had so much rain in December and January.  It really does seem odd. 

This past week marked the beginning of spring term, which means it was back to work for me.  I have two classes I'm teaching, and they are both small.  One class has just four students in it and the other has fifteen.  This is definitely a nice change from the larger classes I had last term.  I do have two students that are extremely low, but since we don't have a beginning class, they are placed in mine.  Essentially, I am teaching one class with two and another with three different levels of students.  This will be the challenging part this semester.  I'm also continuing to work on a special project for our department with another faculty member and preparing to give a presentation with my boss at a large conference.

It's a lot of work, but I don't think it equates to a full-time workload.  I don't think I've mentioned here before, but fall term I made the difficult decision to switch to part-time work.  I was faced with a decision of working 50-60 hours a week or going part-time.  I was no longer able to work full-time by teaching three classes as I have been doing the past four years.  It was a hard decision to make at the time because I was worried about a lower salary and always just assumed I would work full-time until we had kids.  Switching to part-time work was counter-intuitive in my mind, and yet, I'm so glad that I did.  It lowered my stress level and allowed me to work from home one day a week.  I still work 30 hours a week, but I've lessened my work responsibilities, which has freed up time to be more involved at church and doing things I enjoy.  Also, God has shown us that we can get by on less income and still meet our financial goals.  It's been amazing how us sticking to a budget based off Scott's income still enables us to save most of what I make- or at least save it to pay for Scott's tuition.  Read more below.

This past week also marked the second of two weeks that I was alone.  Scott took off for the Midwest shortly after New Year's and was gone for 13 days taking two intensive classes again.  I was a little apprehensive about him leaving again (he did this last summer, but I was teaching intensive courses the whole time he was away), but it's a sacrifice we are both willing to make for him to achieve a goal.  This time it was much harder for me to be home alone since I was off of work the whole first week.  I tried to occupy my time with cleaning and organizing tasks as well as reading several of the books on my to-read list.  I did achieve some of those things, but it still got lonely.  I went on a snowshoe hike and spent time with friends.  I bought a new laptop while he was gone (with his permission) and picked up my first set of glasses (for nighttime driving).  Here's to hoping, however, that we don't have any more two week separation periods in 2011.