Going home

I'm sure there is more I should try to get done today, but I'm going to have to be around tomorrow afternoon, partly to be around for adjunct contract signing but mostly because a student is coming in to make a plea for an incomplete. I don't think it will help him: I crunched some numbers, and the work he's missing is less the problem than the very low grades he got on his first papers because they were insanely late. Well, he and I will talk about it.

Of course a number of students didn't show up to get their final grade sheets. All I can say is, if they complain about their grades, I won't explain anything: I'll just tell them to pick up the grade form.

I'm not submitting grades until tomorrow, however, after I've spoken with the fellow who wants the incomplete. Once I've talked to him, I'll turn in the hard copies of my grades (don't get me started on how idiotic it is that we still have to do paper copies of grades), then I'll submit the final grades on Banner, and that will be that. Then Wednesday through Friday, scheduling (and more contract signing on Wednesday, but I'll be around anyway, so no big deal on that).

I did complete the P&B business I had to take care of, which is a relief. There's one thing I need to do for the college-wide Assessment committee, but I inadvertently deleted the e-mail containing the form I need to fill out (oops), so I have to wait until the chair of that committee has a chance to send it to me again.

Meanwhile, the bruhaha over the mass firings continues. We're all deeply upset, but no concerted action plan has been developed yet--or none that I'm privy to at any rate. I can feel myself on the verge of a full-fledged rant about how education is not a product (the Victoria's Secret version of education: "This B doesn't fit me right; I want to return it for an A"), nor is it a service (I'm not a waitress, bringing you your education on a plate, for fuck's sake). Education is a process, one that requires teachers and students. Teachers are paid because we FUCKING KNOW MORE THAN THE STUDENTS DO. We're experts. We're paid for our expertise. And without us and our knowledge and expertise, our direction and guidance, the process happens--if it happens at all--in random, haphazard, inefficient ways. Yet the "rationale" for the firings was "efficiency."

OK, ok, ok, I have to stop. But it was deeply poignant to me that one of the faculty who had just lost her job was worried about whether she should attend commencement, whether the English department would be represented by enough bodies if she were not to go. She is unemployed as of today, essentially, and yet her concern was to help the department make a good showing. Another faculty member and I told her not to go. She should not dignify the proceedings with her presence, and she should not have to sit and listen to the Axe-man pontificate about how wonderful he is and all the great things he's going to do to this institution. I'll tell you what he's doing to this institution: he's brutalizing it on the path toward killing it utterly. And she's evidence of that--she is, and 65 others are as well.

The union rightly pointed out that the administration has yet to demonstrate how effective they are. We could cut a hell of a lot out of the budget just by ditching a few extraneous pieces of lumber right there--or reducing their salaries to some kind of parity with faculty salaries. Or, as Bruce suggested, all administrators should have to teach at least one course--and not an upper-level course, either, but one of the "we offer a million of them because all the students need them" basic, freshman level gut courses. We'd see a hell of a sea-change if that were to happen, I suspect.

Oh. I said I'd stop.

I'm about to sit at my desk for a few minutes and figure out what's there, sort of organize whatever stacks of shit are still in need of relatively immediate attention. Tomorrow, I hope I can do some real clean-up, ditching old documents and unneeded files, organizing my bookcase (which I've wanted to do for about the last two years), that sort of thing. It would feel very good to head into the summer as "clean" as possible.

And tomorrow is another day....