In preparing to teach my first class after the Whipple surgery, I admit to being more nervous than usual. Much more nervous. Why? I had missed a semester. I wondered if I still had “IT.” I always had strong ratings from my students and often had the first class in my department that filled up. But I worried that I had lost my mojo. I also realized that I was very thin and looked sickly. In addition, I would have to sit at the podium to conserve my energy. I was used to walking around and interacting with the students. Finally, I didn’t think I would be as animated as before.
My initial classes went fine. As noted earlier, I soon thereafter had kyphoplasty (a fancy term for cement being placed into my back). Even though my back pain was greatly lessened from the procedure, I became even more nervous about my subsequent days of teaching, just a short time following the kyphoplasty. I was especially anxious on Mondays as I was teaching a 2 hour and 20 minute graduate class shortly after my 85 minute undergraduate class concluded. I worried about my stamina.
Ultimately, everything went great in the fall 2015 semester. Yes, I had to sit more during both classes. And by the end of the graduate class at nearly 8:30 PM, I was exhausted. Nonetheless, as I should have predicted from the decades of teaching, adrenaline is a wonderful thing. It lets you do what you might think is impossible. Furthermore, when you are teaching, you really can only focus on the job in front of you. If you get distracted,