Today is the day Koreans call 스승의날 [seuseunguinal], "Teacher's Day." There was even a googledoodle dedicated to it.
I received some gifts from a few students – all food… which is, arguably, a bittersweet type of gift at best given my difficulties eating.
And… I guess it's all ironic since I've been feeling like I'm decaying into a bad teacher.
The thing that has me most disturbed is that I seem to be experiencing some kind of cognitive dysfunction – I'm forgetting things a LOT, and I'm losing my flair for keeping organized. This is impacting the quality of my teaching substantially – the other day I gave the wrong lesson to a class – and Korean teenagers being Korean teenagers, the kids said nothing for almost 20 minutes – perhaps puzzled what was going on, perhaps finding it mildly entertaining, or I-don't-know-what.
I've always had something of the "absent-minded professor" in me, but this is not sustainable, and it's the primary reason I say (as I said in this blog the other day) that I don't enjoy teaching anymore – because I feel like I'm getting bad at it.
I'm constantly forgetting things, repeating myself, losing my place, worrying that I'm making a fool of myself in front of my students. The hypochondriac in me fears some kind of creeping new disability, either consequent to the radiation, for example (it's possible – cognitive difficulty is a listed possible side effect), or else some other unrelated thing (e.g. proto senility or alzheimers, etc).
[daily log: walking, 5 km]