Day 3, and it's already a vicious cycle

Summer school has started and I have few observations:

Fact: Teaching is like being on stage.

Nobody says to an actor, "Your play is two hours long and you perform six days a week. You only work 12 hours a week."

(OK, I spend way less time in makeup...)

Fact: Teaching non-native English speakers is hard.

Every day I realize simple things I say need to be explained. An example today: I said, "Let's take a stab at that..." I realized that not only did my students have no idea what "stab" meant but even if they did know what it meant the phrase "Let's take a stab at that" is pretty ridiculous.

Furthermore (another phrase I can't use here), my students' vocabulary amazes me. They know many very difficult terms like "cost-benefit analysis" but have no idea what "backup" means.

Fact: Most of my students have me for Operations Management followed by Marketing.

Big deal, right? Go back to the first fact. Teaching is like being on stage. There's only so much material I've got. (Ask my poor students at Hamilton. Many had me for so many classes that they knew my stories better than me.) I have these students for four hours. Although the content is different from the classes the need to lighten up the material - and keep them from falling asleep - remains the same. For the past year every class was made up of different students. No overlap. That meant I could prepare a few comments and tell it over and over, much a like a comedian traveling from city to city. Now I have no luxury.

It's four hours each and every day with no opening act to warm up the crowd.

Fact: As a late night person I come to class barely awake. To compensate I drink two Coke Zero's and a large Dunkin' Donuts coffee just to make it to 9AM.

The caffeine doesn't really kick in until 10. By the time I have let the class go at noon I am flying; I am ready for another two hours. My students have the look of "Dear Allah, please make him stop."