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Putting the toothpaste back into the tube

We've been asked to teach a 10 week course in 9 weeks. For me, this should be a piece of cake - each summer, I condense a 9 week short course from Cuesta College into a 6 week short course for summer session. I have done this for nearly 10 summers, so one would think a week's worth of snipping would be simple.

I spent a frustrating day alternating between my course content and various shiny distractions. It could well be that I need a break - certainly I'm feeling that lack of  focus that comes from stress - but it's also that I'm making incremental changes from one week to the next. This is not hard work like chopping firewood, but hard work like lining up dominoes and finding a gap halfway through that needs to be addressed by nudging every piece by exactly 1/4". It is tedious.

Creating an online course is usually completed over three terms; one to create the online shell while teaching the course in person, one to launch the course online, and one to fix all the problems discovered in the online offering. We are all skipping through the line and being put directly onto the roller coaster without the sweet anticipation and motivation to anticipate certain turns and jolts.

May the odds ever be in our favor.

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