Sick Day

Yesterday, with only 8 teaching days left in the school year to go, I took my first sick day of the year. It's a little disappointing that I wasn't able to go the entire year without taking a day off - it's a personal goal of mine to have a better attendance record than any of my students, just as I had a better attendance record than my professors in college. But my voice just wouldn't work and it made me really crabby in a situation that should be more fun than work. Exams are over and many students have started early vacations, bringing many of my classes down to 12 or even less students (I had a wonderful class of 7 the other day).

In a normal work environment I would have taken many more sick days, but the culture here looks down on taking time off for illness. For example, I was feeling terrible on Monday and decided I'd try teaching to see if I could make it through the day and take off if I couldn't. When I decided I needed to leave half way through the day, my department head convinced me to stay for the rest of the day, where I strained my voice so badly that I didn't even have to wait for the next morning to announce that I wouldn't be coming in. If I had just taken my half day off, I would've been able to work yesterday.

This mentality is in line with the students who, with a spot of scrapped skin that's not even bleeding, throw a tantrum until they're allowed to go to the nurse's office, from which they return 15 minutes later with their hand wrapped in gauze. When you're sick, even just a little bit, the answer is similarly 0verblown: medicate, medicate, medicate, but don't stop working! When I was sick earlier in the year with a normal flu I was given 3 separate antibiotics. Now that's just unnecessary.

Now let's see if I can make it through the rest of the week without making myself any worse.