The Perils of Panic

My classes start tomorrow—Intro to Lit and Creative Writing (both classes I LOVE to teach), and I’m a nervous wreck. Ray bears the brunt of my internal combustion, smiling patiently as I snap like a twig if he doesn’t change the channel fast enough or puts a spoon in the wrong side of the sink. So in order to preserve our bucolic bliss, I’m trying to figure out why I’m always a sparking ball of bare electrical wires before school starts…

I have things mostly ready to go now in spite of being the Queen of Procrastination, so lack of preparedness isn’t jangling my nerves. I have a great schedule this semester, so a time crunch isn’t unnerving me. I’ve taught both of these classes many, many times before, so uncertainty about what to do isn’t it, either.

My first theory is perfectionism. In addition to inheriting obsessive nurturing from my mom’s murky jungle gene pool—the one where lionesses gather to disembowel hyenas that looked cross-eyed at lion cubs—I also seem to have the obsessive perfectionist (redundant?) gene that bobs around in both parental ponds. No matter how ready I am, my brain is always a-twitter with umpteen gazillion more things I could do to be the perfect teacher with the perfect class. I think somewhere in this perfection fantasy I’m wearing a pink satin ball gown, pink fur cape & rhinestone tiara, white elbow-length gloves, and maybe cradling a ruby scepter, accepting the first-ever Teacher of the Universe award.

I wouldn’t say I’m a pathological perfectionist, though. According to experts, personality traits of the neurotic perfectionist include: emotional guardedness, need for control, fear of making mistakes, thrift, need to be above criticism, tendency to be stubborn or confrontational. And lord knows I’m not thrifty.

My second theory is caffeine overload. I’ve spent the last two weeks, thanks in part to Jack Blizzard and arctic cold, holed up with a bottomless cup of coffee—freshly-ground Sumatran black oil beans mixed with Luwak “recycled” Indonesian beans—working on lesson plans, syllabi, writing assignments, etc. My sleep cycle during this period has been more like a series of catnaps punctuated by sudden starts into utter wired wakefulness, where I force Ray to listen to my new plan for tackling subject-verb agreement problems. I look like Death, just barely warmed over.

My third theory is carb poisoning. Every wakeful start demands Doritos. Or chocolate. Or chocolate melted over Doritos. My muscle is being replaced by fluffy balls of Crisco.

My final theory is Imposter Syndrome. Not officially recognized yet as a psychological disorder, Imposter Syndrome occurs when someone has an unfounded fear of being uncovered as an “imposter” or “fraud.” I hate quoting Wikipedia, but this is just too apropos: “This syndrome is thought to be particularly common among women who are successful in their given careers and is typically associated with academics. It is also widely found among graduate students.” Seriously. It says that.

I guess in the long run it doesn't matter why I'm like this. I just need good coping strategies. I meet all three of my classes for the first time tomorrow, then, with the exception of a Women’s Dinner Friday night and a poetry reading Saturday afternoon, I'll spend the rest of the weekend crashed & comatose. That's a good coping strategy, right? But for now, let's hope tomorrow goes perfectly, I’m not unmasked as the know-nothing fraud that I am, and Ray has the good sense to keep tossing me M & M’s.