Things have just been off the charts hectic around here, and I’m not just talking about Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! I have always taught a lot but since 2015 it has become overwhelming. I did a little number crunching on the train and found that before 2015 I was teaching about 10 classes per year but since 2015 it has gone up to 13.43 classes per year (and that’s with two semesters of parental leave without teaching which throws of the average). This year I got to 15 classes but my record is 17 from back in 2020. And that’s with different preps across several disciplines to boot! These are the classes I taught this academic year (plus summer).

• Logic & Philosophy -3 sections
• Introduction to Neuroscience (Lecture & Lab) -3 sections
• Science, Humanism, and Technology (liberal arts capstone course)-3
• Critical Thinking -2
• Introduction to Philosophy -2
• General Psychology -2

I felt like I was keeping up with things during the pandemic but It has become increasingly difficult to do anything else besides teaching and has left me feeling like I am doing a poor job at everything. For example I gave up on my Consciousness Live! Podcast because preparing for those discussions took away from time grading and prepping lectures. I also had to miss a bunch of the recent Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness meeting, which I had a small part in helping to organize, because it conflicted with my teaching schedule (which changed at the last minute because of class cancelations). I could go on and on.

I hate to complain because I know things are tough all around and things could always be worse. Plus I know in the grand scheme of things I am incredibly lucky to be able to support my family with the work that I do. Even so it has made me a bit grumpy. There is some good news though in that I was awarded research leave for the Fall 2023 semester, which for Laguardia goes from early September until March (don’t ask). An entire six months with no teaching; it sounds like a mythical creature from some fantasy.

Haha…as you can see I enjoy being dramatic. Still, I have been teaching since graduate school and haven’t had an entire semester off like this since my first year as a graduate student. I did take parental leave but that is only a few weeks and then I had to come back and while I wasn’t teaching I still had to come into my office and ‘teach’ logic (that is when I recorded my online lectures for my logic course). Not to mention the stress of a newborn! This will a bit different in that both of my children will be in school, my wife will be at work, and I may once again have time for “reading and sauntering and lounging and dozing, which I call thinking…”.

My hope is to use that time to think about my alleged “book” and possibly some other fun things as well. By the by, I did actually produce a very rough first-ish draft of something which someday could possibly resemble something some people might think of as a book. I haven’t been able to work on it since January of this year because of my teaching schedule but I am hoping to get back to it at the end of August. I decided not to post the material for various reasons but anyone who its interested in seeing the supposed draft can email me and I’ll send a copy. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, especially if it came in sometime before October/November of 2023.