The Seventh Day

Today is a day of rest (even God got one of those), so I don't have any exercise on my plate today. Once you get into a routine, it's actually kind of hard to take a day off, and you feel a little jittery, like you should be out there running or at least taking a walk. And really, a day of rest doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't do any exercise, it really just means you should do something light or something different.

But for me, today is a day of almost no exercise whasoever, and it's a good day for a break because I have class all day. Well, not all day, but I have three classes and they're all about five hours apart. So I start at the very beginning of the day and end at the close of the day, and it feels like forever. Plus, as we get warmed up in the semester, the students get stranger and stranger. I won't even talk about the guy who I believe might be stalking me, and there is also a girl I won't get into here (let me just tell you that she's a "breather" and has too many teeth); no, they don't even bother me as much as Mr. Pencil Sharpener this morning.

I have this student who comes in late every day of class. And not just five or ten minutes late, he's like thirty or forty minutes late every time. I had to talk to him and two others on Tuesday about being on time, but it seems my lecture was dismissed straight away because this morning he strolled in after forty-five minutes. And does he head right for a desk? No! He stands right up front and starts sharpening his pencil! I stopped talking and looked at him, and the whole class was looking at him, and he looked back with an expression that said, "What?" I told him to sit down please, and his demeanor made it seem as though he had no idea why I would ask such a thing. I guess I was the one out of line.

At the end of the day, the mental energy I have expended feels far greater than the physical energy I spend running, and to be honest, I think a good, hard run sounds pretty nice after a few classes of discussing the same material over and over. Thank the Lord for those students who are intelligent and engaged in class, and who also arrive on time, with pencils sharpened. Otherwise, everyday in class would be the equivilant of a marathon, and my brain can't take that kind of workout!