Sub Time -vs- Regular Time

I've been meaning to write about this for a long time. "Sub-time" is something unique to the experience of substitute teaching, and an exception to all the known laws of physics. "Regular time" is something I think we're all pretty familiar with--60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 24 hours to a day, 7 days to a week, 52 weeks to a year, and so on. Sub-time works a bit differently.

Sub-time is the experience of having the last 5 minutes of class feel more like 30. Sub-time is that vague sense of dread that has you wondering how long you can coast before people start getting restless and off-task. Sub-time is what happens when most of the class finishes everything their teacher left for them to do in 25 minutes flat, and you spend the rest of the period wondering how you're going to keep them entertained. Sub-time is what makes 45-minute periods feel like 80-minute periods, and what makes 80-minute periods feel like an entire month with the right (or rather wrong) group.

Sub-time is that bizarre phenomenon where each day feels like a whole week. When you're a sub, your sense of time gets really skewed. It's the biggest difference between teaching and subbing, I think. When you're teaching, you NEVER ever have enough time-ever. When you're subbing, you always have far too much time.