Teaching is Exhausting

For those of you who don't know (like I have strangers reading this blog anyways), I am teaching a five-week, super accelerated, advanced graduate statistics course. It is brutal. I come home from Saturday after talking for four hours and can't decide if I want to sleep, take a shower, or get wicked drunk. I'd like to do all four, but just can't decide on the order.

Teaching is exhausting and I have a ton of respect for people who do it regularly and do it well. I think the primary reason that my situation is so exhausting is the amount of mental energy and preparation that goes into every week. I can't even prep everything in advance, because I never know how much time I will have to spend on stuff. Today I spent 30 minutes walking them through a hand calculation because they kept asking questions.

The second exhausting factor is that these are grad students. For those of you who have never met a grad student, they are truly insane people. Most of them are super Type A, high strung, and neurotic. Grad students are used to succeeding at things, so when they are faced with a challenging class like this one, they literally lose their shit if things don't make sense the first time you go over something. I just want to shake them and tell them to calm down and trust that it will eventually click.

Or bring a flask to class.