Being a Blockhead

At the end of a class, one of my colleagues said he felt like a fried weenie sandwich. AsI sit here swathed in sweats, fleece, and my mommy-made knit socks, I concur, though at this point in the school term, I often refer to myself as a blockhead and feel like Charlie Brown when he puts his head against a wall and moans.

At my university we teach in a schedule called the block. Students take one class at a time for three hours a day for eighteen days. Teaching in the block is intense. I generally arrive at school at 8:30, prepare and grade until noon, teach for three hours, and then hold office hours or attend committee meetings forthe rest of the afternoon. By 5:30, I arrive home, wrecked, barely able to keep my face out of my dinner plate. By 6:30, I’m curled up in the fetal position on my couch.

My home life goes on hold while I’m on the block. Fried weenie sandwich blockhead though I may be, I must take advantage of block breaks (the four days I have off before the next block begins) to get a hair cut, organize my bills, change the oil and wiper blades for my car, and go to the dry cleaners, the health food store, the laundry mat, and the dentist. And somewhere in there I have to find time finish my grading and clean my apartment.

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education survey, university faculty cited “freedom to manage time” as one of the greatest perks of being an academic. At most universities, faculty may arrange their schedules so that they only teach two or three days a week and reserve the rest of their time for research and service, or, let’s face it, to occasionally sleep in and eat strawberry ice cream for breakfast, which is what I used to do in the days before I taught three straight hours a day.

Teaching in the block is also a killer on my wardrobe. Though I live in a town where the only shoes a person can buy are flip flops at the Alco, I like to look nice when I teach (even though some of my colleagues look like refugees from the Patagonia outlet store). I’ve started, however, to subscribe to the Albert Einstein school of fashion in which I wear the same outfit every day: slacks and a tailored shirt. Generally only the colors change.

But there are good features of the block. I never run out of time when I facilitate classroom activities, and I enjoy watching students become bonded as a group. Teaching only one class at a time allows me to focus on one set of students at a time, though faculty responsibilities force me to commit a great portion of my day to activities that don’t directly involve my students.

Another feature of the block for faculty is that we only teach three blocks out of four per semester. Our off or “professional” block is a time when we are supposed to crawl out of the buns of our respective fried weenie-ness and produce some kind of brilliant prose that wins international accolades, guarantees tenure, and removes gum from berber carpet.

Last year, I had block one off (ostensibly to let me adjust slowly to my new life at the university) and then I taught blocks two through eight. Yup, seven blocks in a row, taking time off only for holiday breaks and whooping cough. I taught an additional class to help out an ailing colleague, and I bore the burden of the class neither nobly nor silently. There’s a fabulous picture in the yearbook featuring me gobbling a bag of Smartfood at May graduation. To all those who mocked my junk food/doctoral gown combo on that day, the photo says, ‘Hey, I just taught seven blocks in a row. Bite me.’

This year,though, I intend to take full advantage of my off block, which I happen to be on right now (and it is the reason that I can actually write this column!).Though I have a new class to prep, an article to write, and teacher workshops to give around the state, I plan to take a bona fide vacation to see my buddy who just happens to have secured a tenure-track position at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Gambling and buffets and showgirls, oh my!

And while I’m there, I’ll drink a toast to my fellow blockheads at the university and hope that this is the one block that doesn’t make them feel like Charlie Brown with his head against a wall.