Time to panic?

My brains are feeling relatively scrambled. I'm pretty sure it's a result of rapid-fire transitions from one task to another, trying to keep all the plates spinning--or remove some from circulation.

I have crossed some things off the list today. I didn't mention--took for granted--that I got everything marked to return to the 102 students yesterday, and I did the same for the Native American Lit students today, all except the one young man, who didn't turn in his paper until today. I told him I'd try to get comments to him via e-mail before Monday, but looking at my weekend, it's highly unlikely. I will try--but it's not my top priority for the next three days. After all, he was late with the damned thing; I'm not going to knock myself silly making up for his fuck-up.

I had, however, forgotten something I need to have on the to-do list. I've probably mentioned it in some post at some point, but I'd carefully ignored it when I wrote up the list last night: although I finished my year-end evaluation report, I am the P&B contact for a number of people, two of whom have actually submitted their reports to me. So I need to review their reports, let them know if there are any problems--and write up a few paragraphs to summarize and sign off on the report. (Great God in the Morning, but I detest this kind of bureaucratic bullshit.)

I also attended my first meeting as an elected member of the college-wide Academic Standing committee. I'm already on a panel to review a grade grievance: those only get to the college-wide level if there is a real possibility of a violation of college policy or the professor's stated policies (or if the professor's policy is in genuine conflict with a college policy). It won't require much: when the time comes, I'll review the documentation, then there will be one meeting with the panel, the student, possibly the faculty member, and presumably a representative from the faculty member's department (Bruce goes whenever a grievance gets that far for one of us). So, that will look good in terms of college service without being onerous. I did, however, just spend quite a bit of time writing a memo to all my colleagues in the department, explaining the ramifications of "errors" in using a new grading policy. Apparently, since a number of faculty either innocently or deliberately did not follow the new policy, Academic Standing is dealing with a hairball of epic proportions. It was rather fascinating to hear the bruhaha about it today--and it will be continually fascinating to see how the saga unfolds. Despite the stop-gap measure taken today, the situation has not been fixed by any stretch of the imagination, so the hairball will, well, snowball, I guess, to mix a metaphor (and create a rather bizarre mental image).

Of course, the maddening thing is that the people most likely cause the problem are those least likely to read the memo I carefully crafted. But ah well. I also may face a barrage of irate commentary about the policy itself ("I'll make a note of that and discuss it in the committee") and/or of inane questions about implementing it. Well, this is what it means to be on an academic senate committee that actually does something.

Also on my "to-do" list are write-ups of the two observations I've conducted, including last night's. The professor was there when I walked in--so he was on time, at least, but everything got worse from there. First, he started by saying to me, "You're late. Just kidding." (It was the stroke of on-time, by the way. And he wasn't really kidding: he was pissed off.) Then he spent a great deal of time justifying what he had done and what he was going to do--all for my benefit, and all wasting the students' time, if not flat-out baffling the bejesus out of them. Then the "lesson" itself was a rolling train-wreck: babbling stream of consciousness from him in the guise of "workshopping" a student's paper, calling for student reactions and then running over them before they could say anything, asking rapid-fire streams of questions that kept the students from figuring out where to focus, contradicting himself, jumping around (not literally--he sat behind his desk the entire time--but in what he was looking at in the paper under discussion), not listening to or understanding what the students did manage to squeeze in by way of response.... And he was stunned, utterly shocked, when I told him that the class had been problematic to say the least. As I tried to explain to him where the problems lay, he ran over me, too, justifying, explaining--not listening.

As I think I've mentioned, I actually like this colleague on some levels. He is beyond manic and has no sense of boundaries or what is appropriate, but he exhibits an underlying sweetness that I find oddly charming. I do not want to hurt him personally. Indeed, I didn't tell him everything I had problems with about the class--the pedagogic value of the entire assignment, for example. But whatever his students have learned, it's pretty much by accident, as far as I can tell, and I worry that if any of them end up in a 102 like, oh, mine, or Paul's, or Kristin's, they'll be completely and utterly unprepared and out of their depth.

So I am not looking forward to writing it up. And I think I need to consult with P&B before I do, as I'm not sure whether I can include things that I didn't mention in the "conference" with him: he had to go to his next class--and was late anyway, as he kept trying to justify, explain, talk me out of the unsatisfactory rating, invite me to observe him again (in his next class, on Friday, anytime...)--so I didn't have time to say as much as I might have. I do hesitate to "call" other professors on specific kinds of assignment. For instance, I don't think personal narratives have much pedagogic value, but colleagues I respect have made a reasonable argument for how they get that kind of writing to segue into academic writing. But the whole assignment I observed--in fact, just about everything on his syllabus? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. Still, I don't know whether that truly belongs in my observation report, and I need to get a consensus from P&B.

I could--probably should--write up the other observation tonight (contractually, I may already be late with it). Right this second, however, I don't think I've got the mental energy or acumen to do it. Acumen: isn't that a spice used in curry and chili?

OK, when I start making jokes that stupid, it's a pretty good signal that I'm getting daffy and should stop, turn the brains off, and boot up again another time. No matter what, I'll be taking student assignments home to mark over the weekend--working around a flurry of personal stuff on my schedule (all of which I actively want to do). Even though it's relatively early, so I feel I "should" stay here and get more done, part of what keeps me from wanting to gut through more is the knowledge that I have to be back bright and early tomorrow morning (gack) and be here for hours (double gack), hearing about assessment for fuck's sake (quadruple gack). Well, I am a strong woman: I can handle it. Bring it on. I'll panic later.