Life's Rich Pageant

For the next couple of weeks, Candy will be in academic quicksand.

In other words, the new teaching job is starting. This week there are various "orientation" meetings for newbies like myself. And lemme tell ya, switching from a teaching job at the Big Giant University to teaching at a Little Bitty Community College is a whole different tupperware of worms.

Enrollment-wise, the place isn't all that small. 7,000 students vs. the 42,000 at my old job. But the campus is absolutely tiny. And exquisitely beautiful. It's dropped between two mountains and on the 16 mile drive up there, I have trouble focusing on the road. "Look, Candy! Look at the mountains! What are we doing living where there are mountains?" my little Inner Candy says. And I do my best to shut her piehole so we don't end up just another casualty reported by the traffic copters. Also distracting, I might add.

The L.B. Community College is just like a big high school. Everybody knows everybody. The secretaries, professors, students, random security guys. They ALL know one another. You don't want to speak harshly to anyone or make an enemy because 2 minutes after you might honk off a clerk in the teeny little bookstore for pointing out that she charged you twice for a magazine, the news has burned its way along the invisible grapevine to your own department, where you will be instantly labeled "Trouble."

And Candy does not want to be that. Nosiree. At least not until classes have started.

And then my own struggle begins. Because, as some of you already know, the universe has had great fun with me lately when forming my teaching schedule. I, Candy Rant, the woman who delights in staying up until dawn, doing all of her favorite things (watching DVDs of "Mr. Ed" and "Hawaii Five-O", eating junk food, locating unseen corners of the worldwideweb where you can buy faux cockroach swizzle sticks, and putting little bonnets on my cat) until the annoying, useless birds start their morning song, have been assigned a class that meets at 7:30 a.m. I plan to walk into that class holding a sign: "Do NOT speak to me." There will be a stern glare that goes with it.

Scott, who LOVES, LOVES, LOVES the early morning hours told me how much fun it will be to get up together and eat breakfast together and have coffee and "You'll see how great the morning is!" Please, do stop by if you'd like to sign his cast.