Long Teaching Day

Mondays are my longest teaching day this term, lecturing in two undergraduate courses back to back from one to seven. Seem terribly daunting and exhausting and raw with exposure -- fifteen years ago I did this all the time, but it's hard to pour out all that sharpness and focus and enthusiasm into such a long and sustained performance nowadays in my fifties. How am I still supposed to be doing this ten years from now? Here's hoping I've got enthusiastic students to engage with to keep things interesting and lively. On the one hand, opening lectures seem comparatively low-pressure, just a matter of going over the syllabus and course policies and introducing ourselves, but these opening moves and impressions set quite a tone, and I always tend to downplay just how many initial frames and formulations get trotted out in these first lectures, often in the form of comparatively off the cuff and informal statements...