It was the spring semester of 2011 — the end of my first year in a full-time but non-tenure-line faculty appointment at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. It was 8:00 a.m., and I was walking into my first of two two-hour classes for that day. We were in week eleven of a 15-week semester, and, although the Minnesota winter was finally breaking and the sun shone brightly that morning, neither myself nor any of my forty-odd students wanted to be in class so early.
