The Cliffs Notes version of the day

I actually had ferocious back pain this morning, and I used that as reason enough to bail on Advisement. I just finished grading everything for the SF class about 20 minutes ago. All is good on that front.

In the 101, four of six students showed up; two of four had completed their essays. Whatever.

My former student who is currently falling apart in the SF class just came to see me. She's on Academic Warning, so her grades in everything have been problems (and apparently she's withdrawn from a lot of classes). I've told her to talk to the academic retention counselors to find out what her best option is for my class: gut it out and know she'll probably get a D (which would be a mercy D) or withdraw. She started to cry; that cheerful "No problem" thing is clearly a coping mechanism covering very real fear and frustration. I hope she gets help. I hope she figures out what she needs to do to get her life situation improved enough that she can go to school and succeed.

I'm kinda ready for my presentation tomorrow to the Future Teachers' Club. I'll be winging it, like usual--but I have an idea for how to start, at least.

My mental triage list now has getting everything nailed down for the Nature in Lit as my first priority, then doing my P&B business. (I've actually done a teeny bit of that today, as one of my colleagues and I were supposed to draft up some language to run past the rest of the committee; she did the heavy lifting, but we batted things around by email--and it's now ready to roll out for the rest of the committee to bat around some more.)

I have things to post on classroom doors: a little ridiculous map for the SF class (though I think only one student might need it), and the "No class: conferences" notice for the 101.

I spent time with Cathy today, ostensibly working on summer adjunct schedules--but the Registrar's office has created a serious SNAFU with specific paired sections of a new initiative we're rolling out in which developmental students have their own class but also are part of a regular credit-bearing 101 section. The section designations and linking are really hard to get clear, so it's not surprising they screwed up, but in trying to rectify the situation, they also deleted regular sections of 101. So Cathy and I realized we really can't do anything else until that's sorted out, as there are too many domino chains attached. Further fun and frolic to come.

And that's my 10 minutes worth of time to talk about today. I'm off. (I'm also leaving.)