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THINGS HAVE CHANGED:

Since I am no longer a professor in the classroom, this blog is changing focus. (I may at some future date change platforms, too, but not yet). I am now (as of May 2019) playing around with the idea of using this blog as a place to talk about the struggles of writing creatively. Those of you who have been following (or dipping in periodically) know that I've already been doing a little of that, but now the change is official. I don't write every day--yet--so I won't post to the blog every day--yet. But please do check in from time to time, if you're interested in this new phase in my life.


Hi! And you are...?

I am interested to see the fluctuation in my readers--but I don't know who is reading the blog, how you found it, and why you find it interesting. I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to use the "comment" box at the end of any particular post to let me know what brought you to this page--and what keeps you coming back for more (if you do).





Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Smaller fires to put out

I remarked to Ed last night that each day the scale of the fires we're putting out gets a little smaller. We started with horrifying crown fires, then more ordinary forest fires, then brush fires ... Now I think we're down to grass fires. There was a moment this afternoon--of course right after I had begun to celebrate that I was able to turn to working on my own classes--when it looked like the fires might escalate again, but it really was no more than the usual SNAFUs: assigning two sections at the same time to one adjunct; assigning two sections that had a time conflict to another. The biggest hairball of the day was trying to find someone who could teach an ESL dedicated section of enhanced composition--but we finally found someone (and a very good someone at that), so our bacon has been saved. (I'm not sure why we're saving bacon, but there you have it.)

I am going to have a little bit of a struggle with the new adjunct union rep for the department. She is just learning the job, and it's been a while since I had to do what's called the "retention pool," which is a method for indicating that we have not violated seniority in distributing classes. One of the things she needs is a list of who is qualified to teach what, and how the qualifications are determined. We don't have a nice master file of that anywhere: most of it was in Bruce's head, though the qualifications had been sent to someone (god knows who) in the administration as we hired new adjuncts--but now that we have a new chair and all the concerns about having clearly delineated procedures to satisfy Middle States (our accrediting organization), it is important that we have a nice, neat, clear, official statement of how qualifications are determined, how they can be updated--and who is qualified for what.

My struggle was getting the new rep to understand that--although I completely understand her concern that she doesn't have such a list--we can't simply whip one up in just a few minutes, nor can I simply explain it to her over the phone. But this is going to be an issue for P&B to deal with ASAP this semester. If we had more office staff, we could delegate the data-entry parts of the task to one of those people; if we knew who in the administration has the list, we could simply ask that we get a copy. If, if, if.

Right now, Cathy is so mangled by what we've just been through, I don't even want to bring it up--but I just sent an e-mail about it to P&B so I wouldn't forget.

And when I checked e-mail, there was a message from the new union rep, saying that someone who had given us about a zillion choices for her availability only got one course and is complaining about it. She didn't get anything else because of her qualifications--but the adjunct who sent the complaint to the union rep is the problematic adjunct I observed in the fall. We're going to be observing her multiple times in the spring--unannounced observations--because we tried giving her a class we though she could be good at it, and she made such a hash of it, we want to rescind the tacit approval of her qualification to teach the course. It's going to be one hell of a mess to deal with, and I am not not not looking forward to it.

I'm also regretting giving the union rep my cell phone number. I did just say that I prefer not to deal with work related issues on my phone so would prefer to stick with e-mails. The last thing in the world that I need is to get constant text messages about work. I know this has become part of our culture: that we are always instantly available for any reason whatsoever, from friendly hellos to work demands--but I refuse to play that game. I am not chained to my phone, and I refuse to be. I am entitled to my time away from work, God dammit, and I intend to protect it fiercely.

But for now, I think I'm about as done as I can be for today. That's both done as in finished, having completed anything I think I can take on today, and done as in cooked to a turn--perhaps even more than a little scorched. I found some errors on both syllabi and corrected them and started the list of what I need in the way of first week (or two) handouts, and I have quite a list of things I need to handle at home (turning .docx files into PDFs, for instance), but for tonight, I think I can wrap up and head home.

Cathy is happy to have me roll in sometime around noon or a bit later--which suits me fine. I just want a morning or two without having to get up to an alarm--and if I can get my photocopies done tomorrow, I'll be in fine shape. Mangled, but functional. That's about as good as it gets right about now.

2 comments:

  1. I bow to your ability to suffer fools, if not gladly, then more graciously than I. Keep up the tango contest y que brillen las estrellas.

    B

    ReplyDelete
  2. And...brava re phone messages. Enough. Pardon apparent contradiction but these are public comments, not messages on phones.

    ReplyDelete