Exhausted Anticipation

I've done nothing for about a week but I'm completely burnt out.

It's weird because this is a burn out that comes from anticipation. It’s not because I'm actually working my ass off right now.

Basically, here is my time schedule from September 1st through mid-December. The part of the schedule that is in italics is my school stuff and the part that is in regular font is my work stuff.

Mondays: 9 am to 1pm - RA/TA work, 2:30pm to 5:30pm – East Asian Regional Order and Inter-Korean Relations

Tuesdays: 9 am to 1pm - RA/TA work, 2pm to 5pm – Special Topics in Development

Wednesday: 10am to 1pm - Special Topics on International Public Relations, commute from Seoul to Anseong and teach from 3pm to 8:10pm

Thursday: Teach in Anseong from 12pm to 3pm and from 8:20pm to 10pm

Friday: Teach in Anseong from 9am to 6pm

And, for the sake of privacy, I've actually left some stuff out of that schedule.

Lay it out on a grid and it's just brutal to see. (I couldn't figure out how to format a chart that didn't completely screw up the layout of my blog, hence the layout above).

Let me explain that on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday mornings I'm a graduate student. On Wednesday afternoons, Thursdays and Fridays I'm a university English instructor.

School is pretty easy. Not academically, but it's just that I know the system and can get around it easily. However, on Mondays I'll be taking a class at Seoul National University. The problem is Seoul National is across town.

For work, that's routine now too. Now I commute from Seoul to Anseong which is about one hour if traffic is behaving. However, once school starts traffic doesn't behave as there are two universities in Anseong and the bus is full as is the train, so when school is in session it's more like ninety minutes. Commuting isn't really that bad. Usually I read or sleep in transit. The bus station is a five minute walk from my office, so that's not bad either. But during the term I usually take the train because you avoid traffic with the train. The wrinkle is getting from my university to the train station. I've perfected the train station commute, but walking five minutes to the bus station is much easier. It's just that taking the risk that traffic will behave isn't worth the ease of that short walk. It ends up that the five minute walk ends up being a two hour comuute back to Seoul if there is bad traffic.

What's bad will be Thursday night/Friday mornings. I'm seriously thinking maybe I'll sleep in my office and just bring a change of clothes. I can stay, study, crash and not commute. I think that is what's going to happen. I have the right to an apartment, but I'm not sure I want to deal with it. However, I also don't want to feel homeless, so I'll probably talk to someone about getting a key to that apartment so I can sleep there one night a week.Don’t worry about lunch folks. I squeeze that in even though the folks who make my work schedules don't.

So, for those of you who know me, you probably won't hear from me until Christmas.

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