The Dreaded Syllabi

I'm very excited to start teaching again in a couple of weeks. What I'm not excited about is writing the syllabi for my classes. Planning a whole semester's worth of work at one time can be overwhelming. I'm teaching two new classes this Fall--British Lit I and Honors Critical Thinking and Speaking, and I'm teaching two sections of Comp I, which I've taught many times before. But, for some unknown reason back in the Spring, I decided that it would be good to adopt a new textbook instead of just keeping the one I'd been using. What in the world was I thinking?

So, now I have three syllabi to design. Being the on-top-of-things type of person I am, I went in to the office the other day to get started. I'll just do the one for Comp I, I thought, and get it out of the way. After all, that should be the easy one. I worked on it a little while, left to meet my husband for lunch, and came back to a computer that refused to boot up because, it kindly informed me, there were important files missing.

So, I just called tech support and went to Little Rock instead. The best laid plans of mice and men . . .