College starts back up on the 20th for us at ZSC…which is in three days! I teach an online, self-guided course that needs to be up and running by the 20th, and then on the 21st, I’ll have an in-person course that also needs to be ready to go. Phew!

As much as I love long breaks from school, it’s amazing how quickly I fall out of academia mode during them. My goal during this winter break was to write as much of The Step and the Walk as possible, all while doing edits with my publisher for The Name and the Key, and also reviewing more comics and manga on the website thanks to my NetGalley membership and relationship with Media Lab PR (who provide me with many manga goodies, including TOKYOPOP).

Readers, I did a lot. The only thing I didn’t do more of, and I wish I had, was increase my total word count for The Step and the Walk. Now that school is going to start soon, I will be back to figuring out how to balance teaching prep with grading and answering emails and writing books and reviewing books and doing marketing for said books.

Work-life balance has never been a success story of mine.

Well! The good news is that I already completed the PowerPoint lesson plan for the first week of class, which covers the three major assignments coming up for the students. I got into Blackboard for my physical course and added two assignments that won’t appear until the week starts…and I created writing samples for both of them to help the students out. The syllabus for the physical course has been updated with an assignment due date schedule and class schedule, too. This is actually far more put together than what I was when I started teaching at ZSC in the fall, so I feel pretty good about how things are.

What I really need to do is get into the online course, though, and add assignments and update the syllabus there, too.

I hope that for the first week of school I’m not braindead in class. I’m excited to see a small handful of returning students from my first term, which inspires confidence in me, but if I am not mentally prepared for school this time around, I might flub the first week, where first impressions are important.

All I know is that I want to improve greatly from the last term. It wasn’t bad, but I could have done better, that’s for certain.

Please wish me luck for a fabulous spring term! And more importantly, the self-discipline and power to maintain work-life balance!