7:00 a.m. or 7:00 p.m.?

It's hard to tell.

I drive to class in the pitch black at both those times and sometimes have to think hard to remember if it's morning or night. This is the product of some confusion at SLCC, when the longtime admin assistant to the English department took a different job at the college, leaving the scheduling of classes in the lap of a full-time faculty member, who bravely stepped up to the daunting task, but who wasn't familiar with most of us adjunct instructors. Glancing quickly through the dozens of names, she didn't realize that there were two Websters: Shulamith and I. She thought we were the same person, so she gave Shulamith's regular classes to me and offered nothing to Shulamith. When we finally figured out what happened, she rectified the situation by giving Shulamith back her normal classes and allowing me to choose which sections of ENGL 1010 I wanted, but sadly, by this point, precious few sections remained.

Hence, my spring 2020 schedule at SLCC: Two sections of ENGL 1010 at 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. Monday and Wednesday, and one 3-hour section on Saturday from 10:00-1:00. It's for sure the strangest schedule I've ever had, and I figured I'd either love it or hate it. After two weeks of class, though, I'm still not sure. There are definite pros and cons:

Pros
1. I am free all day, every day between my 7:00 a.m. class and my 7:00 p.m. class. This makes me feel more like a stay-at-home mom, which is my absolute favorite thing to be.

2. I only have to do this weird schedule two days a week.

3. Students who take classes at 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. usually do it because they work full time jobs during the day. These students tend to be a little older and pretty dang responsible, and I've already seen evidence of this.

4. The campus is like a morgue at 7:00 a.m., so I can get a parking spot just a few steps from the front door.

5. The Saturday class. Students who will go to English class on Saturday are just all around awesome. Also, this class is on the Jordan campus, in the Health Sciences building, so my classroom has all kinds of cool pictures of body parts and skeletons.

Cons
1. I'm not a morning person. At all. (I'm not a night person either; I'm sort of a middle-of-the-day person.) This is really early for me.

2. Both Monday/Wednesday classes are on the South City campus, so I have to drive all the way downtown, twice, in the dark.

3. The Saturday class. Cuz, you know, it's Saturday, and I'm not supposed to be in school.


More pros than cons thus far, and we're two weeks in. I'll keep you posted as the weeks progress. Meanwhile, if you see me on the freeway headed north in the dark, you'll know where I'm headed. And that I'm likely struggling to remember whether it's 7:00 a.m. or p.m.