Maybe I'm finished... partly, sort of

I think--and I hesitate to say this--but I do think that I have everything done for the 101s. I made further changes to the schedule, of course. My dear colleagues on P&B let me know that what I had as the last day of class is actually a "make-up" day, in case campus is closed enough days that we need to make up a day. It's very confusing, as the next day is actually the last day of classes, so that last week we have classes Monday, classes Tuesday, no classes Wednesday, classes Thursday....

Weird, but it did make that change to the assignments very easy, as I had that slated as a "conferences in my office" day anyway. But I also remembered (after stumbling across the uploads on Blackboard) that I'd decided I wanted to provide a few extra credit readings (and associated discussion boards) for the second essay--which meant not only changing the schedule of assignments but also changing the grade calculation sheet (which I changed about seven times today even apart from that particular adjustment). Still, it wasn't terribly difficult to accomplish--and fortunately, because of the way the pagination fell, the additions only affected two pages out of the 22 (or however many it is; you can look it up in yesterday's post).

I actually spent a lot more of the day working on Blackboard, making sure all the materials are there, are current, will be available when I want them to be (and not before), that all the links line up and connect... and I finally was able to copy it all from the section I've been working on into the other section, which I carefully emptied of all content earlier in the summer so I wouldn't inadvertently load things 45 time (which I've done in the past, despite the warnings provided by the Distance Ed mentors about how easy it is for that to happen).

The only thing I haven't done regarding the 101s is to reexamine my grading rubrics, possibly reworking the rubric for the editing step in the process. But I've been nailed to the computer all day--I was not smart enough to set up the timer to get me out of my chair at least once an hour--and I'm just about frozen in place. So I'm not going to do any other work today, and I'm going to try to minimize the noodling around I'm bound to do as soon as I finish this post.

I don't know whether I'll have time to work tomorrow, but I'm guessing not. I have a dentist's appointment, then I head into the City for my rescheduled fiddle lesson (as my instructor is leaving town on Saturday and will be gone for about a week), possibly a tango class after fiddle. Friday may be the usual string of events--or may include another dental appointment. But because of the rescheduled fiddle lesson, there's a chance I'll have time to work on Saturday. I don't think I'll go to the City just for tango; I'll probably do yoga class and then toddle on home--or maybe yoga, life maintenance, home. There is still some significant work I need to do for the SF class, and although I could possibly leave it for later, I'd rather get it done before classes start, so I don't have to think about it any more. And then there's the ever dangling online Nature in Lit, which will continue to dangle for god knows how long.

When I'm on campus next week, I'll do a lot of printing and copying. I still don't know how many copies of anything to make: the enrollment in both the SF and the relatively empty section of 101 has improved slightly but not enough to make me completely sanguine that both classes will run. Well, Cathy and I will deal with the FT schedules that are in much more obvious peril first; then we'll deal with folks like me--at which point we'll be setting up if/then scenarios: if Prof. P's T section of 101 runs, give the "no instructor" G section to Adjunct X; if it doesn't run, give Prof. P the G section and find something else for Adjunct X, if possible. That sort of thing. We try not to let any of those scenarios have more than three dominoes in them, or it gets impossible to track (and that's why we ended up giving someone a three-class schedule in the spring. You'd think the faculty member in question would have noticed and said something, but she didn't until it was too late to fix, so she had to teach a summer class without pay to make up for it. But I digress.)

I have piles of paper all around my little computer desk, printouts and notes to myself--and I have no clue any more what's still current and what's old and useless (or potentially confusing). My inclination is to throw it all into the recycling bin and believe that at some point I will remember anything I really do need to do--or that if I don't remember something that was on one of the lists and was left undone, that it doesn't really need to be done in any event.

I'm starting to confuse myself. I'm packing it in for today. I'll be back posting, well, whenever, I reckon. Whenever I have something to report....