8:00pm – Finally sit down to start studying for the Vocational Behavior class exam that is scheduled for 9:00am the following day. Break out the 12 page study guide I have made for myself earlier and attempt to memorize lists of studies, authors names and dates, correlational findings, meta-analyses, definitions of a zillion similar constructs.
10:00pm – Realize that I am struggling to retain any of the information on the 12 pages; resort to making flash cards of the most important material instead.
10:40pm – Run out of index cards to write on.
12:00am – Eyes are completely glossing over. I still have like 1/4 of the material that I have not even looked at, but I go to sleep anyway.
5:00am – Wake up; study some more. Intermittently fall asleep.
7:20am – Get ready for school
8:10am – Leave the house with backpack, lunch, laptop bag and purse. Get outside, realize it is raining, and come back for umbrella. While trying to lock the door, drop the umbrella, handle side down, on my bare toe. Scream in the hallway.
8:12am – Unable to find garage door opener in my purse, I drop my belongings on the neighbor’s porch and dump everything out. No garage door opener. Go inside and look for it there. It’s not there either. Realize that I have left it in my car, which is locked inside the unopened garage.
8:14am – Call John at work, who has the spare opener in his car.
8:20am – Get the emergency bypass key, try to use it, struggle, ask John via phone what I am supposed to be doing.
8:23am – Figure it out; drag the garage door open by hand. Get a handful of loose asphalt stuck under my fingernails. Go back for my belongings, which are still on the porch. Load up the car, back out of the garage, stop the car, shut the garage by hand, get in the car, look at the clock, scream again. Exam starts in half an hour.
8:25am – Drive to school, frantically memorizing the rest of the information I have failed to even look at while balancing it on my steering wheel.
8:45am – Arrive in parking deck; walk across campus as fast as humanly possible, still memorizing.
9:00am – Take the test. Write 7 pages of essays. Cry a little on the inside.
10:40am – Finish the exam; pack up my stuff and go to the counseling center.
11:00am – 3:00pm – See clients.
3:20pm – Return to the psychology department, go to the computer lab and print out all of the stuff I have failed to prepare for teaching due to the studying.
4:00pm – Arrive in my classroom and start setting up, only to realize that I have left my notes in my office. Run back to the psychology department, passing a student who says, “The classroom is the other way.”
4:05pm – Arrive back in classroom covered in sweat and thanking God that I somehow thought it would be a good idea to wear flip flops with a professional skirt. Begin teaching.
5:00pm – Try to show my class a YouTube video. The sound will not play. The screen wants to shut off. Recruit a tech-savy student in the class to help me out, but she is unable to diagnose the problem. At her suggestion, I give the class their 5-minute break. After 1-minute, the video decides to work.
5:10pm – The video is on how graphic artists use Photoshop to re-do (and totally change!) pictures in the media. Another video comes up as a suggestion on YouTube, and one of my students asks if we can watch it. Sure, why not.
5:12pm – I tell my students about another video I saw where they used Photoshop to change a photo of a man into a woman. Another student suggests that I search for the video so we can watch it. I am really tired, so I agree. Without thinking, I type “Man into woman” in the search box and start scrolling through our options. There are lots of naked people in bed together. It takes me a minute to realize what I typed really means. My students are cracking up.
5:13pm – Feel torn between laughing, turning red, and crying inside all over again. Do all three.
6:00pm – Meet up with some friends in the psychology department, get dinner at Country Diner and make immature jokes and quote John LaJoie and SNL the entire time. Feel like we deserve it.
7:30pm – Go back to campus and watch a spoken word artist (Carlos Andres Gomez!) perform. I see one of my students there. We wave at each other.
9:00pm -- Feel deeply moved. Feel like crying. Clap a lot. Meet him after the show and tell him I am in my third year of a doctoral program in counseling psychology, and that I feel like everything I have been learning for the past three years he taught me in his hour long performance.