Overcommitted. Is There Another Way to Be?

Recently, I was offered the opportunity to write curriculum for an online learning company. It sounded like a good gig, and they asked me during the summer, so I agreed to contract on for a unit or two. Of course, by the time the ball really got rolling on this project, we were into the school year. Needless to say, it has been hard to find time to get the extra work done.

I am not really worried about it, yet. I have about 9% of the work done, and about eight weeks to do it. As far as my regular school work, I am staying out in front of my planning by about a week, and I have a back log of only three days on my grading (really, that is nothing). So, right now, I am managing.

However, in two weeks, it's time for mid-quarter grades, already! This means I have to make sure that I have some meaningful grades in my grade book by then. Perhaps meaningful is the wrong word. What I mean is, I need to make sure that I have assigned and graded an adequate amount of student work to show a true reflection of student achievement (or lack thereof). Really, this just means I have to assign one more writing assignment in one more class. But, that one assignment might be the tipping point.

The way I figure this, I need to create a topic and a quarter per week for the online folks, and grade at least five sections of writing assignments per week as well. This is extremely doable, and will not add any real extra time to my school work load (which is already 60-plus hours a week). It will add time to my workload, in general, as I steal hours from somewhere to work on the online stuff.

And here is where the problems begin to start, since tomorrow ushers in another season of NFL football. Will I be stealing hours in front of the TV, in order to generate contracted curriculum? Maybe. More likely, I will be in the basement, tapping away at my laptop, while the games play on the TV. Unfortunately, that means the only place for me to steal some time from somewhere is to put a moratorium on yard work. As long as the grass stays brown and the leaves don't fall, I guess that will work out.

Zoinks!