Day 84 and 85: ...and counting

Tomorrow is big day number one, the day Gracie and I go to the campus as an official team for the first time.  Mentally, I'm confident that we are ready and that Gracie will be her sweet, attentive self and I will be calm and focused on what we are going to the campus to do: get a program installed on my computer and attend a workshop that includes lunch.  The trouble is that I get nervous, back-to-school stomach every fall and have since the day my mother brought be to a church basement to attend pre-school.  That was such a chaotic place that I didn't last the day there.  Kindergarten, as I recall, was not a whit better.  It took me several years of saying a sort of mantra to myself--"You are no longer in school. Relax."--after I graduated from college to get over school-related, fall anxiety.  When I went back to grad school, the feeling returned and then intensified when I became a teaching assistant.  The years I've taught a class in the summer, the feeling was actually reduced. This is probably because going back didn't follow a long period of pleasant downtime.  Giving that up is very hard, especially for a reclusive person such as myself. I'm glad, though, that Gracie and I  have this next week to get used to the campus together.  In addition to Monday, we have department meetings Wednesday and Thursday, and a training session with the TLC (Tutors Linked to Courses) tutors (students who are paid to help a specific class of students). I lined up two terrific students in the spring--a long time ago in the life of a community college student--and am now keeping my fingers crossed that both can still be part of this wonderful  program--wonderful for them, for me, and especially for the students that they help.