The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

GOOD

Today, I stayed after until 6 p.m. and got a ton of crap done. It felt good. I've been such a horrible procrastinator lately, and it was nice to go home with a significantly lightened load. This is the way I used to work.

BAD

There's no way I can get back to that... not permanently.... not with a kid on the way. Damn, how am I going to manage my life.

UGLY

Today I snapped at a kid for something I shouldn't have. He later sent me an e-mail that made my blood boil, saying that I was wrong to make the statement that he didn't "care about the class." The thing is, even though he didn't quite deserve to endure my wrath at that moment, he had a semester's worth of frustration on my part built up and ready to burst. And burst it did.
The thing that pissed me off was the fact that I had to apologize. He deserved everything that I said to him, but the timing was wrong.

I replied in an e-mail that was carefully re-written about seven times before I hit "send." I tried to balance the apology with careful but assertive statements about my own frustrations. I must have done a good job because the response that I received within the hour was.... non-hostile. I have no idea where we're going to go from here.

At least he's graduating.