The Sunday Night Problem

Sunday afternoon hits and your stomach tightens. The stack of papers you didn't grade. The lessons you didn't plan. Another week starting before you recovered from the last one.

Why it happens

The unfinished work. There's always something you didn't get to. It follows you home. It sits in the corner of your mind all weekend.

The anticipation. You know what Monday looks like. The packed schedule, the needs, the chaos. The dread builds.

The stolen weekend. You spent Saturday "resting" (but thinking about work) and Sunday catching up. So you never actually got a break.

The grading loop

Common pattern: Plan to grade Saturday morning. Too tired. Push to Sunday. Sunday comes, force yourself through it, resent every minute, still don't finish.

The pile casts a shadow over the whole weekend. Even when you're not grading, you're thinking about grading.

What fixes it

The answer isn't better time management. If there's too much work, no amount of optimization fixes it.

The answer is eliminating the work. If grading takes 10 hours and you reduce it to 30 minutes, Sunday anxiety disappears. Not because you coped better—because the problem went away.