Random bullets of again with the start of the semester

• RU's spring term starts late, but we're now back in the thick of it. At least it's light past 5.30 p.m. And maybe in six weeks it'll stop snowing.

• Because we start so late, our job candidates come out pretty much the second the semester begins. I don't know how this is for candidates, but it's a little frantic-making to be photocopying syllabi and dealing with last-minute registration bullshit while trying to be all smiley and welcome-to-our-world!

• That said, I have the cushiest teaching schedule of my entire career: just two preps, both of them extremely familiar (two sections of Shakespeare's histories and tragedies and a graduate Milton class; though I haven't taught the graduate version in a while, I taught a Milton senior seminar just last term)

• Despite my anxieties, my Milton class looks great. It's a small class and many of my students aren't lit students (nearly half are creative writers and a couple are in the M.Ed. program), but they're a good bunch with good energy.

• Somehow I always forget that M.A. students really are qualitatively different from undergraduates. They're both fun groups to teach, but I'm looking forward to how much I'll learn from my grad class.

• My actual schedule is also awesome: TWTh, with both my Shakespeare classes mid/late afternoon on TTh and Milton on W night. It means going out to campus an extra day every week, but it's much less exhausting.

• Given the total fabulosity of my schedule, surely I'll have nothing whatsoever to complain about for the rest of the semester. Right?

• Right?

• Just you watch.