A Vision of the Next Two Weeks

I think it's starting to hit me how busy I'm about to get over the next two and a half weeks. I have a meeting Monday during my only free time of the day to hammer out details on the summer research project that I'm working on. Three faculty, three students. My preference was that we figure all of the details out among us faculty and then let the students know, but one of the other faculty members told the students to be at the meeting, so we'll see how that goes. Part of me thinks it may be better that way, so I'm hopeful it will go well. I just remembered a commitment Tuesday evening. Wednesday, I may have a little bit of time in the morning, but it will be spent getting ready for a thesis defense in the afternoon. The thesis covers a topic that I'm not familiar with at all, so I'm not sure why I'm even a committee member. The thesis itself should be stellar, but that's not really the point. Thursday, I've got teaching and then packing for a brief trip that I leave for on Friday. No need for details, but suffice it to say that I won't get any work done over the weekend. So far, busy but not too bad, right? I've got students turning in papers Monday and other students turning in two assignments over the weekend. None of that will take lots of time to grade (all short), but they will take some time. I give a final on Monday and Wednesday of the week after next, so grading to do there. Those will take a little bit of time to grade because I made one of them less about multiple choice questions and more about listing and short answer. All of that is still busy, but manageable. But then I also volunteered to rate writing portfolios for my university's writing center (which I've done almost every semester that I've been here). It's a great way to earn a little extra money, but it's pretty time consuming. And I don't think it hit me that I've only got two and a half weeks to do it. That task may put me over the top. It's going to be a bumpy ride.