Do not get on my irritable side!

Two big gulps of NyQuil knocked me unconscious till the alarm o’clock went off this morning. I dragged myself out of bed straight to a long hot shower and that, along with a hot cup of tea and honey, cleared my head and throat for a little while. I made it just fine through a tedious lecture on pronouns, prepositions, and adverbs in my Greek class, then a faculty meeting and office hours. Now let’s see if I can make it to a birthday party tonight with this awful scratchy throat and airtight head feeling. Such is the ambivalence of not being sick enough to justify staying home but not feeling well enough either, which in my case makes me very irritable. For instance, a student came by to turn in her essay paper. I took the paper and reminded her that it was a day late and that it would receive the due penalty. She mentioned that she was sick yesterday and could not submit the paper on time, to which I irritably replied, it’s still late. She stormed out of my office and a few minutes later the phone rings. On the phone, her uncle, a pharmacy professor, was calling me to explain how sick his niece was the previous day. Feeling more irritable by now, I explained to the uncle my policies for late papers as clearly detailed on the class syllabus and as a bonus I also told him how often his niece misses class. He apologized and hung up. Please do not get on my irritable side!