Appearances Can Be Deceiving

On the outside, I may appear cool, calm, and collected. On the inside, however, I am currently a nervous wreck.

I've reached the point where I have so many things on my mind that I can't work. I need to get these thoughts out somewhere. So, I decided to record my anxieties here.

• I have students from last semester still complaining about their marks. The final exams were returned to the students and one student typed up hir answers, emailed them to me, and requested that I provide comments and explanations as to why the grades that I assigned were so low. I stand by my grades, but it's so disconcerting to have a student question my grading competence like this.
  
• I'm stressed out about the paper that I'm slated to give at Small Society's Annual Meeting next week. I proposed the paper last December and it really did seem like a good idea at the time. But I'm only half way through the initial round of research. I need to do another library run. And write an initial draft. And three rounds of revisions. And I have to finish it by next Friday. I keep telling myself that a 30-minute paper is only 12 pages. But I'm such a slow writer and the ideas that seemed so novel last December now strike me as pure stupidity...
  
• I'm stressed out about the amount of work that I need to finish between now and moving to my First Real Job: the paper for next week, two chapters of The Thesis, RAships with Advisor (totaling approx. 350 hours) and Prof. Mom (who is totally flexible), planning courses (three in the fall, one in the January intensive, and three in the spring), a paper for Big Society's Annual Meeting (not until November), another possible paper for next March, and planning The Move.
• The Move: Should I take a trip down (at my own expense) in June or July to find a place to rent? Or do I trust a future colleague (read: a total stranger) to scope a place out for me? Do I take up Best Friend's offer to move my stuff 16 hours away? (She would need to schedule her vacation, we'd rent a mini-van, and I would need to decide which books to leave behind.) Or would it be better to hire a moving company? (One company quoted $1800 for 2000 lbs, which would mean that I could take ALL of my books and furniture.)
• Fear of the unknown: What if I can't manage the teaching load? Or I don't know enough to teach these courses? (I know that at least one course will be material that I know nothing about.) Will I be able to manage to teach and to look for a new job at the same time? Will I be able to balance teaching and research? What if I absolutely hate living in such a small town? And how will I manage living in a place where I don't know anyone?
  

Yep, I'm a veritable basket of anxieties. And I'll manage all of this somehow.

But even if I can't, at least I'll look like I know what I'm doing.