...and then there was chocolate

I've done a pretty good job of staying out of the little candy bowls all over Advisement and the department office, but today, the narcotic was necessary to keep my energy up for the long haul of the day.

For whatever reason, the powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, decided to open spring enrollment to the entire student body all at once at noon today--and the system pretty promptly crashed. It took hours for IT to get things back up and running (if indeed they have), but in the meanwhile, absolutely zero work could take place in Advisement, as the advisers couldn't access student records to evaluate their progress toward their degrees, look at transcripts, look at course offerings: nothing. I'm sure the decision was made in part because students in the past complained that they couldn't get the courses they wanted because by the time it was their turn to register, courses were already filled to capacity. That's a legitimate beef, I grant, but today's enrollment feeding frenzy could have been anticipated. I just hope to hell that the students who were suddenly shut out--unable to register for their classes, whether they wanted to see an adviser first or not--don't say, "Fuck this for a bag of apples; I'm going to Suffolk." We hear all the time how we need to encourage retention, retention, retention (and that we need to get the enrollment numbers up): today's fiasco, in addition to the crumbling infrastructure of the campus (one building semi-demolished even as we're still teaching in it), is unlikely to send students the message of confidence we'd like to project.

In the "good news" department, however, my own stint in Advisement was pretty well over when the system crashed, so the only effect to me personally was that I didn't have to try to keep working an additional 20 minutes to cover the 20 minutes I was late getting there. (I set the alarm for earlier than usual, but I used up the additional time doing my usual "I don't have to get to campus until later" morning activities, and ... well, oops.)

Class went fine. Nothing of great note in any particular direction.

P&B went fine as well. We were talking about promotion folders--and I'd only read one, so I essentially got to just say, "Pass." The nice thing is that I suddenly was wearing my guise as eminence grise of the committee and corral the conversation, monitor the passing of the "speaking stick," and say, "Should I read that one?" I will, of course, read any we didn't discuss today prior to next week's meeting, but today was pretty easy for me.

And I did finally talk to Cathy about scheduling adjuncts for spring. We have--as I think I've whined before--virtually zero time between New Year's Day and when we must have contracts signed, and as it happens, Cathy will be in London the week when I thought we'd be in her office sweating blood over the falling chains of dominos. However, Cathy has very intelligently prevented one of the larger issues we've encountered in the past: faculty who are teaching a multi-disciplinary course (i.e., one not housed specifically in our department) have it on their schedules as an adjunct course, in addition to a full load of English courses. One of the problems we often have is that the multidisciplinary courses don't run, and then we're scrambling for something to fill the schedule for a full-time faculty member. As things now stand, if the multidisciplinary course runs, the faculty member can opt to teach it as an adjunct course, making some extra money, or can drop something from his or her full-time schedule, which we can then assign to an adjunct.

The other thing that will make our lives easier than they've been is that there just aren't very many courses to cover. Cathy has cut way back on what we're offering--which not only will make it more likely that all courses have good enrollment but also will mean we don't have to take courses away from people because they're not running. The "worst case" scenario is actually a good case: we may have to open new sections of courses if we have more students than we have seats. But those newly opened sections go to adjuncts. The people who are going to suffer, of course, are the adjuncts: a lot of people who are used to getting multiple courses may get only one--or none. It's dreadful for them, but that's the nature of the beast at the moment.

For me, the best news of all this is that Cathy and I may be able to get preliminary adjunct assignments done in December; then that first week in January, I might have to come to campus a bit, but mostly I can simply monitor enrollment from home in my bunny slippers (I really should get a pair of bunny slippers), keeping in touch with Cathy and Lori, our spectacular office administrator, by email. That works for me.

Right at this red-hot moment, I will continue the self-indulgent theme of the afternoon. Having allowed myself a few "bite size" pieces of chocolate, I will now allow myself to head home before 8 p.m. I have plenty to keep me occupied the next two days, but I'll figure out what I need to do when I'm back in the office. I'm pretty sure I'm packed up and ready to roll to Advisement as soon as I get in tomorrow, and that's enough planning ahead for the moment. Sufficient unto the day are the smashing plates thereto. I've got the plates spinning well enough to last over night--and I'll be sweeping up the shards tomorrow.