..but I think Cathy put out the last of the fires about 30 minutes ago (our magnificent office administrator, Lori, realized that there was a course filled with students but with no professor). I spent a lot more time today working on adjunct stuff than I'd hoped--when I went in, there were a couple of small fires that needed to be put out before I could even start doing the counts of how many sections we had to offer versus how many sections were requested. Just for the record, the answer is: we had 70 unassigned sections--and requests for 138 sections. We canceled something like 48 sections. The goats really got their jollies this time around.
I did, however, get a chance to make the photocopies for the first day of class--and a tiny bit beyond, I think. My files are a mess; there are still about a dozen significant bits of work I need to do to have everything really ready for the start of the semester, and countless little gnat-type things that I have to swat so I'm not driven to distraction.
I know myself: I am not naturally very organized, so I have to impose ferocious levels of organization on myself, or I'll quickly lose track of where I am and what I'm supposed to be doing. The only frustration I had at all working with Cathy on all the scheduling stuff was that she's somewhat the same way: she kept getting distracted by X when we needed to focus exclusively on Y, and we spent a fair amount of time reminding ourselves and each other of decisions we'd made, why we'd made them, that sort of thing. But I will say that she did a remarkably good job of remaining good humored in a real trial by fire. Talk about shot out of a cannon... I have nothing to complain about, by comparison.
Of course, that doesn't keep me from complaining. I said this morning that I am aware I am bitching about being gainfully employed doing something that I care deeply about and being paid well to do it. I am blessed beyond all measure and should do nothing but offer my profoundest gratitude to the universe for allowing me to have the life I have. And as soon as I start looking at all the things for which I am grateful, I feel my resentments and anxieties recede. Not disappear, mind you, but back off enough that I feel I can breathe for a moment.
I have been aware of a trend I want to stop. Never mind the ways I abuse my body (lack of exercise, unhealthy food choices, not enough sleep); I have started to sometimes think how wonderful it would be to be literally, physically unable to do my job--at least for a month or two. I know that if that were actually to happen, I'd be miserable beyond words; it's just an indication of how hard it is for me to continue to get up in the morning and come in here to do this. There are still the moments that can make me feel exhilarated--like talking last semester with that student who suddenly was turned on to reading--but I've lost something I used to have. I used to wake up in the morning--even to a painfully early alarm--and feel fine about heading in to work. Now, I have days when I wake up in the morning and dread it. I hasten to say that the dread doesn't occur every single day, as it has in some of my past jobs, but the fact that it happens at all alarms me. I don't want to feel this way about what I'm doing. I've always said that if I start getting bitter and hostile--or simply stop giving even the tiniest of shits--it will be time for me to do something else, and I feel myself heading in that direction. I'm not there yet, but I am watching myself closely, monitoring my "I can't stand this" meters.
And I do periodically ask myself, "OK, stop doing this--and do what instead?" I can't afford to simply stop working--or I could, but I'd have to drastically reduce my standard of living, and I'm not yet to the place where that feels like the only viable trade-off. So my task, my personal goal for this semester, is to try to find whatever it takes so I feel the job is working for me instead of it being something I have to endure.
Wow. Writing that all out makes it sound like I am a great deal more depressed and miserable than I am. I am tired (when am I not tired?), and if I think too much about all the things that could possibly go wrong, I can get very depressed and miserable. But there is much to feel good about, too. Nature in Lit ran with sufficient enrollment without me having to sweat the numbers even for a moment. One of my 102s has three students from last semester--including two of the brightest, who dropped the course in the fall for various reasons. My Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be brutally long: I teach until 7. Teach until 7. I usually need at least an hour or two to sort, organize, get myself set for the next day (and, yes, post to the blog), so I'll be lucky to be home before 10 those days, unless I can figure out a way to go through the decompression stages much more rapidly without getting the metaphoric bends. But I have my 102s on the same day of the week, so they're not going to be out of phase--which I value highly. And I don't have a zillion students in any of my sections, or not yet anyway. Enrollment is still going on, so I could end up with something closer to full sections, but I'm glad with what I've got.
I am. I'm glad with what I've got. And among the things I've got is tomorrow and Friday away from here. Cathy said she doesn't need me tomorrow (and I'm hoping no new fires suddenly flare up), and neither she nor I will be in on Friday. I can work from home over the weekend--and I have a big, long break between classes on Tuesday in which I can fiddle and futz around the office.
It's 6:24 p.m. and all's right with my immediate world. And that's about as good as it gets, folks.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
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.
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.
Monday, January 9, 2017
Reeking of goat...
Today was another goat-fuck-fest. We sort of got the problems with FT schedules worked out, but we're still white-knuckling a number of courses that have low numbers. We got rolling on the adjunct schedules at long last--and hit some SNAFUs pretty early on. We got to the point where we were confusing the hell out of ourselves and each other, so we decided (probably an hour or two after we should have) that we'd do better to drop everything for tonight and try to get a fresh run at it tomorrow. There's a whole lot that we need to see happen in the computer systems before we really know where we are--and we just found out that there's only one person in the pertinent office doing all the course changes, cancellations, and so on, for the whole campus.
This is lunacy on an even greater scale than the fact that we only have one office administrator for our department. The wheels are falling off this whole institution.
I did try to get a little of my own work done this morning while Cathy completed the move into the Chair's office (or at least got it mostly completed)--but I'm so confused about what I have to do, what I've already done, where things are, that I'm about to lose my mind.
And I did lose my late afternoon 102. It's being replaced by an early evening 102 on the same days, which is generally a good thing, but it does mean I have to reconstruct my schedule in terms of my office hours, seminar hours, evening supervisor hours...
I know that eventually all this will pass and it will just be a story we tell: "Remember that one semester...?" But now, in the thick of it, it's hard to remember how resilient I am (how resilient all human beings are: people keep on keeping on through much worse than this little shit storm)--and it's hard to remember that this too shall pass. And it will. Even if the semester is a chaotic mess from start to finish, eventually, the semester will finish--and between now and then, heaven only knows what miracles might occur.
In any event, I would love to natter some more--my brains are in overdrive, I'm wired for sound--but I know what will be best for me is to take care of my non-work self and get out of here. If it pleases the gods, perhaps tomorrow will be easier; perhaps tomorrow I will be able to sit and work methodically through my own course work, feel clear and organized and on top of things. But even if not, it will be another day: nothing for me to yodel about right now.
This is lunacy on an even greater scale than the fact that we only have one office administrator for our department. The wheels are falling off this whole institution.
I did try to get a little of my own work done this morning while Cathy completed the move into the Chair's office (or at least got it mostly completed)--but I'm so confused about what I have to do, what I've already done, where things are, that I'm about to lose my mind.
And I did lose my late afternoon 102. It's being replaced by an early evening 102 on the same days, which is generally a good thing, but it does mean I have to reconstruct my schedule in terms of my office hours, seminar hours, evening supervisor hours...
I know that eventually all this will pass and it will just be a story we tell: "Remember that one semester...?" But now, in the thick of it, it's hard to remember how resilient I am (how resilient all human beings are: people keep on keeping on through much worse than this little shit storm)--and it's hard to remember that this too shall pass. And it will. Even if the semester is a chaotic mess from start to finish, eventually, the semester will finish--and between now and then, heaven only knows what miracles might occur.
In any event, I would love to natter some more--my brains are in overdrive, I'm wired for sound--but I know what will be best for me is to take care of my non-work self and get out of here. If it pleases the gods, perhaps tomorrow will be easier; perhaps tomorrow I will be able to sit and work methodically through my own course work, feel clear and organized and on top of things. But even if not, it will be another day: nothing for me to yodel about right now.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Sunday progress report
I spent a good deal of time today whacking through the syllabus for the online Nature in Lit: I need to have enough put together that the VP can sign off on it. She needs to see that I have the basic nuts and bolts in place, such as a syllabus, course goals and outcomes, how to contact the professor, assignment requirements, blah blah blah. I need to go back to what paperwork I have online (the stuff I didn't lose in that mysteriously missing folder, along with the mysteriously missing book) so I can take a stab at going through the checklist, such as it is, and making sure I can show everything I need to show in order to move forward: not just get all the signatures again but get the thing approved by the College-Wide Curriculum Committee and the Academic Senate (which still does have the authority to approve curriculum, though our new president wants to usurp that authority).
In the process, I was trying to find a textbook I could like well enough to use. The one I most wanted to use is, sadly, out of print. I requested an examination copy of another, but I don't think I'll go with it: not only is it wildly expensive ($150+), it's so rigidly thematically organized and so lacking in older material that I can't pull it apart to do things the way I want. So, as of now, it looks like I'm going to go with the old reliable Norton Book of Nature Writing, college edition, which I used the first time or two I taught the class. It's "only" $50 (give or take) for a brand new copy, and it's easily available much cheaper used. Plus it's got enough of a decent selection that I can work with it, and it's pretty much chronologically arranged, which often works well for me in lit electives.
And I'm so in the groove, I kinda don't want to stop--but if I don't, I'll be nailed to the computer for many more hours; dinner will be ridiculously late, and I won't get to sleep until god knows when. But it's nice to feel that I've broken through some kind of resistance or fear and am making headway.
I probably won't get to work on anything of my own tomorrow--enrollment has not moved at all over the weekend, so Cathy and I will be having another goat orgy--but if I can at least make a stab at getting my first week handouts ready, I'll be happy.
And I'll almost certainly post again tomorrow...
In the process, I was trying to find a textbook I could like well enough to use. The one I most wanted to use is, sadly, out of print. I requested an examination copy of another, but I don't think I'll go with it: not only is it wildly expensive ($150+), it's so rigidly thematically organized and so lacking in older material that I can't pull it apart to do things the way I want. So, as of now, it looks like I'm going to go with the old reliable Norton Book of Nature Writing, college edition, which I used the first time or two I taught the class. It's "only" $50 (give or take) for a brand new copy, and it's easily available much cheaper used. Plus it's got enough of a decent selection that I can work with it, and it's pretty much chronologically arranged, which often works well for me in lit electives.
And I'm so in the groove, I kinda don't want to stop--but if I don't, I'll be nailed to the computer for many more hours; dinner will be ridiculously late, and I won't get to sleep until god knows when. But it's nice to feel that I've broken through some kind of resistance or fear and am making headway.
I probably won't get to work on anything of my own tomorrow--enrollment has not moved at all over the weekend, so Cathy and I will be having another goat orgy--but if I can at least make a stab at getting my first week handouts ready, I'll be happy.
And I'll almost certainly post again tomorrow...
Friday, January 6, 2017
Maybe goat foreplay...
Today wasn't quite the goat fuck yesterday was, but it was still one hell of a frantic day. We still have a number of FT schedules that are potentially in trouble, and we haven't gotten close to working on adjunct schedules--even though contract signing starts on Tuesday (screaming, mayhem, and other signs of utter panic). At this point I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with my own courses--but hey. I may end up teaching an evening section of 102, if my late afternoon section doesn't suddenly experience a surge in enrollment. If anyone knows which gods need to be propitiated and how, please advise.
The other thing that was a little panic-inducing today was that our one full-time office staff member was out sick. She'd said last night that she didn't feel well but couldn't get sick; I assured her that her health was more important than work and that she should take care of herself. This morning she called Cathy: temperature of 102, very likely the flu. Cathy sent out the SOS, and one of the office staff from the Reading department came over to help us out. She was great; patient, careful: truly a god-send. We actually got Lori, our amazing office administrator, from the Reading department: she was just told she was changing departments and had no say in the matter. Consequently, the chair of the Reading department was more than a little reluctant to loan us someone, for fear she'd never get her back. And if we could do it, I'd love for us to keep Ann, the woman who helped us today. Time will tell what happens with that.
I have more I could natter about, I know, but Cathy needs a ride to the train station, and I need to start slowly applying the brakes to my turbo-charged brain, or I'll still be jittering at 2 a.m.
I may post over the weekend, as I'm sure I'll be doing work on my courses--and I'll definitely be posting on Monday. Stay tuned, faithful readers!
The other thing that was a little panic-inducing today was that our one full-time office staff member was out sick. She'd said last night that she didn't feel well but couldn't get sick; I assured her that her health was more important than work and that she should take care of herself. This morning she called Cathy: temperature of 102, very likely the flu. Cathy sent out the SOS, and one of the office staff from the Reading department came over to help us out. She was great; patient, careful: truly a god-send. We actually got Lori, our amazing office administrator, from the Reading department: she was just told she was changing departments and had no say in the matter. Consequently, the chair of the Reading department was more than a little reluctant to loan us someone, for fear she'd never get her back. And if we could do it, I'd love for us to keep Ann, the woman who helped us today. Time will tell what happens with that.
I have more I could natter about, I know, but Cathy needs a ride to the train station, and I need to start slowly applying the brakes to my turbo-charged brain, or I'll still be jittering at 2 a.m.
I may post over the weekend, as I'm sure I'll be doing work on my courses--and I'll definitely be posting on Monday. Stay tuned, faithful readers!
Thursday, January 5, 2017
The usual "shot out of a cannon" feeling...
The start of the new semester is always a lot like being hurled forward, and this one is going to go down in the annals as a particularly violent shove for the start. Cathy and I were working on scheduling--but we didn't even touch adjunct schedules, except to take courses away from some of them. Forty-eight course sections on full-time faculty loads are in jeopardy because of low enrollment--and some of those are classes that have always run full-to-bursting in the past, to the point that we're usually being begged to open more sections. This semester, we've canceled seven sections already, and we'll probably cancel three times that before we're through. We're even going to have to give FT faculty evening sections of comp classes. That may not sound like a big deal, but the rule is that any comp course that is not scheduled during regular day hours must be assigned to an adjunct--unless there is a dire emergency.
This is a dire emergency. And the adjuncts are going to scream. I don't blame them in the least: I'd be frantic and furious if I were in their position--but we are that desperate. We're asking FT faculty to take classes at horrible times even within the day "grid," and we're hamstrung by the fact that--unless the faculty member is teaching online--she or he must teach no more and no less than four days a week.
There's a line in the movie G.I.Jane when an operation has turned out to be a nasty mess, and the Master Chief says, "What a goat fuck." Yep.
As for my own courses, I did manage to pull some things together over the holidays--including putting in a little work for the future online Nature in Lit. I have a syllabus for the FTF version I'll be teaching in 12 days (Jesus Christ on a bright blue bicycle!!), and I think I have a syllabus for the 102s. I haven't changed as much as I'd have liked in terms of trying to lighten the grading load for myself, but I have some intentions about how I'll do at least one phase of the marking. If I can follow through on those intentions, things will be somewhat easier than they were this past semester. And so far, I don't have anywhere near as many students. In fact, one of my 102s is on that "danger" list. I'm hoping for a surge in enrollment; I just looked at other options, if it doesn't get enough students in it to run, and they're bleak....
But I'm not there yet. A lot will become clear over the weekend. But I am definitely working with Cathy all day tomorrow. There's a little bit of furor over the fact that there is a "winter weather advisory" issued for tonight into tomorrow--but although I may have to drive to work slowly and carefully, it doesn't look like it's going to be anything that would cause a complete shut-down of operations. Of course, I remember my father's story of listening to a radio program in Pittsburgh, and someone called the station to say, "I just want to let the weather man know that I'm shoveling 8 inches of 'partly cloudy' out of my driveway this morning." Then again, there have been many times we've prepared for a blizzard of epic proportions and gotten nothing. So who knows.
But I'm taking it on faith that both Cathy and I will be able to grind through a lot of work tomorrow. It would be a miracle if we get to the point where we actually can start working on adjunct schedules--but man am I ever glad I didn't go any further with making preliminary assignments than I did, as pretty much everything I did is going to get undone. Cathy is even talking about coming in to work on the weekend--but that's partly because she's still in the process of moving into the Chair's office from the Placement office. I advised her to only focus on moving over the weekend and not work on scheduling at all; we can see where we are on Monday.
And I'll see where I am with my classes on Monday as well. I do want to try to squeeze out a little more plain relaxation and enjoyment before classes begin, but that will only be possible if I feel confident that I'm ready for the semester to start and won't be playing catch-up from the first week. The readers for the 102s have been printed and are in my office, and so far, I don't have to ask Printing and Publications for more copies of the Nature in Lit reader: I asked for 20 copies, and enrollment has been holding steady at 19 students for a while now. Worst case scenario: a few students have to start with just a few of the pages and get the full reader later, which wouldn't be a catastrophe.
And writing that makes me realize that I really do need to rethink the readings for the online version: it's just not feasible to scan as many documents as I'd need to in order to do my own tailor-made reader--never mind the fact that I'm treading on thin ice in terms of copyright laws if I post a bunch of PDFs of copyrighted material online. The early stuff I can find online already and just provide links: things that are in the public domain are pretty easy to find. But much of what I want to use isn't in the public domain, so....
Well, again, that's not a concern for today. Right now, I want to get out of here and take care of some life maintenance. (Yes, life still needs to be maintained, even when one is being stampeded by work pressures.) But it seems I'll be back in the swing of blog posting pretty early in 2017: I expect I'll post a bit sporadically over the next week and then the usual rhythm will assert itself.
Holidays? Did we have those? I don't remember...
This is a dire emergency. And the adjuncts are going to scream. I don't blame them in the least: I'd be frantic and furious if I were in their position--but we are that desperate. We're asking FT faculty to take classes at horrible times even within the day "grid," and we're hamstrung by the fact that--unless the faculty member is teaching online--she or he must teach no more and no less than four days a week.
There's a line in the movie G.I.Jane when an operation has turned out to be a nasty mess, and the Master Chief says, "What a goat fuck." Yep.
As for my own courses, I did manage to pull some things together over the holidays--including putting in a little work for the future online Nature in Lit. I have a syllabus for the FTF version I'll be teaching in 12 days (Jesus Christ on a bright blue bicycle!!), and I think I have a syllabus for the 102s. I haven't changed as much as I'd have liked in terms of trying to lighten the grading load for myself, but I have some intentions about how I'll do at least one phase of the marking. If I can follow through on those intentions, things will be somewhat easier than they were this past semester. And so far, I don't have anywhere near as many students. In fact, one of my 102s is on that "danger" list. I'm hoping for a surge in enrollment; I just looked at other options, if it doesn't get enough students in it to run, and they're bleak....
But I'm not there yet. A lot will become clear over the weekend. But I am definitely working with Cathy all day tomorrow. There's a little bit of furor over the fact that there is a "winter weather advisory" issued for tonight into tomorrow--but although I may have to drive to work slowly and carefully, it doesn't look like it's going to be anything that would cause a complete shut-down of operations. Of course, I remember my father's story of listening to a radio program in Pittsburgh, and someone called the station to say, "I just want to let the weather man know that I'm shoveling 8 inches of 'partly cloudy' out of my driveway this morning." Then again, there have been many times we've prepared for a blizzard of epic proportions and gotten nothing. So who knows.
But I'm taking it on faith that both Cathy and I will be able to grind through a lot of work tomorrow. It would be a miracle if we get to the point where we actually can start working on adjunct schedules--but man am I ever glad I didn't go any further with making preliminary assignments than I did, as pretty much everything I did is going to get undone. Cathy is even talking about coming in to work on the weekend--but that's partly because she's still in the process of moving into the Chair's office from the Placement office. I advised her to only focus on moving over the weekend and not work on scheduling at all; we can see where we are on Monday.
And I'll see where I am with my classes on Monday as well. I do want to try to squeeze out a little more plain relaxation and enjoyment before classes begin, but that will only be possible if I feel confident that I'm ready for the semester to start and won't be playing catch-up from the first week. The readers for the 102s have been printed and are in my office, and so far, I don't have to ask Printing and Publications for more copies of the Nature in Lit reader: I asked for 20 copies, and enrollment has been holding steady at 19 students for a while now. Worst case scenario: a few students have to start with just a few of the pages and get the full reader later, which wouldn't be a catastrophe.
And writing that makes me realize that I really do need to rethink the readings for the online version: it's just not feasible to scan as many documents as I'd need to in order to do my own tailor-made reader--never mind the fact that I'm treading on thin ice in terms of copyright laws if I post a bunch of PDFs of copyrighted material online. The early stuff I can find online already and just provide links: things that are in the public domain are pretty easy to find. But much of what I want to use isn't in the public domain, so....
Well, again, that's not a concern for today. Right now, I want to get out of here and take care of some life maintenance. (Yes, life still needs to be maintained, even when one is being stampeded by work pressures.) But it seems I'll be back in the swing of blog posting pretty early in 2017: I expect I'll post a bit sporadically over the next week and then the usual rhythm will assert itself.
Holidays? Did we have those? I don't remember...
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Not quite the midnight oil...
When the alarm went off this morning, at the usual time, I just couldn't. I couldn't be up yet. I went back to sleep--and slept much later than I intended, so I spent the late morning having repeated little anxiety attacks about how late I'd have to be here to get everything done. Answer: about 8:15 p.m.
I had a little fit of ... I don't quite know what to call it: I realized that I could actually mathematically figure out what the equivalents of number grades would be if the A+ equivalent was a 35, or 15, or 20, or whatever, and that my guesstimates had been pretty far off. I almost went back through to re-do every grade form for the class I'd already finished--but I checked a few, and the error made zero difference to the outcomes: the number values were easily within rounding range. But I will change those equivalents for myself ... sometime. I am sure as shit not doing it tonight.
All my grades have been recorded on hard rosters and submitted to Banner. A few students who came in with last-minute withdrawals managed to get the withdrawals processed before I submitted grades. A few students who got withdrawal slips some time ago never submitted them--and now have the "ouch" of an unofficial withdrawal, which affects GPA as if it were an F.
Each class had one or two F's. Each class had one or two A's. There are more D's than B's in the comps; about an even spread in the SF class. A whole lotta withdrawals in the SF in particular. Perhaps slightly fewer in the 102s--but I did lose a bunch at the end, over the novel. Shame, that.
The office closed 6 hours ago, so I'll be leaving my hard rosters on the office door--and I'll live without the photocopies of them that I usually make. My desk is a bit of a disaster area, but it will just have to be like that until January.
I got an e-mail today from the Distance Ed folks, saying that there is some kind of problem with my 102s, so I can't simply copy the information into next semester's courses. I don't know how big of a problem this is going to be, but if I have to reinvent the wheel, as it were, I don't think that will be too problematic. It's mostly a matter of uploading the files I use for general purposes; the syllabus and Turnitin links and all that stuff would be new anyway. I haven't heard from them yet whether I can just say "These are the bits I'd like to copy" and have them sort it out or whether I have to sit down with someone and work through it: I'm hoping the former. But we'll see how it goes.
I imagine I will post to the blog from time to time over the break, as I sort things out for spring, and as I'm back on campus dealing with adjunct scheduling. Oh, speaking of which: come the start of the spring semester, I can look forward to meeting with the adjunct I observed, Cathy, and the adjunct union rep: apparently, the students said that the adjunct was horrible to them when she found out there'd been a complaint--and the students said, "When that lady came to see the class, she [the instructor] was great: if she'd taught us like that all semester, we'd be really happy." Imagine my delight at the prospect of trying to hash things out with this woman. Cathy has already said, union or no union, the adjunct won't be teaching 001 again--and that we're going to start proceedings to have her removed, whatever that entails. The fun just never stops around here.
But that's for January. More immediately, I have a day packed with life maintenance tomorrow (cat to vet, riding lesson, violin lesson, grocery shopping), but I hope I can get some prep done on the Nature in Lit on Saturday, as a Christmas gift to myself. But if I don't have the oomph for it, so be it. Somehow it will all come out right in the end. It always does.
I had a little fit of ... I don't quite know what to call it: I realized that I could actually mathematically figure out what the equivalents of number grades would be if the A+ equivalent was a 35, or 15, or 20, or whatever, and that my guesstimates had been pretty far off. I almost went back through to re-do every grade form for the class I'd already finished--but I checked a few, and the error made zero difference to the outcomes: the number values were easily within rounding range. But I will change those equivalents for myself ... sometime. I am sure as shit not doing it tonight.
All my grades have been recorded on hard rosters and submitted to Banner. A few students who came in with last-minute withdrawals managed to get the withdrawals processed before I submitted grades. A few students who got withdrawal slips some time ago never submitted them--and now have the "ouch" of an unofficial withdrawal, which affects GPA as if it were an F.
Each class had one or two F's. Each class had one or two A's. There are more D's than B's in the comps; about an even spread in the SF class. A whole lotta withdrawals in the SF in particular. Perhaps slightly fewer in the 102s--but I did lose a bunch at the end, over the novel. Shame, that.
The office closed 6 hours ago, so I'll be leaving my hard rosters on the office door--and I'll live without the photocopies of them that I usually make. My desk is a bit of a disaster area, but it will just have to be like that until January.
I got an e-mail today from the Distance Ed folks, saying that there is some kind of problem with my 102s, so I can't simply copy the information into next semester's courses. I don't know how big of a problem this is going to be, but if I have to reinvent the wheel, as it were, I don't think that will be too problematic. It's mostly a matter of uploading the files I use for general purposes; the syllabus and Turnitin links and all that stuff would be new anyway. I haven't heard from them yet whether I can just say "These are the bits I'd like to copy" and have them sort it out or whether I have to sit down with someone and work through it: I'm hoping the former. But we'll see how it goes.
I imagine I will post to the blog from time to time over the break, as I sort things out for spring, and as I'm back on campus dealing with adjunct scheduling. Oh, speaking of which: come the start of the spring semester, I can look forward to meeting with the adjunct I observed, Cathy, and the adjunct union rep: apparently, the students said that the adjunct was horrible to them when she found out there'd been a complaint--and the students said, "When that lady came to see the class, she [the instructor] was great: if she'd taught us like that all semester, we'd be really happy." Imagine my delight at the prospect of trying to hash things out with this woman. Cathy has already said, union or no union, the adjunct won't be teaching 001 again--and that we're going to start proceedings to have her removed, whatever that entails. The fun just never stops around here.
But that's for January. More immediately, I have a day packed with life maintenance tomorrow (cat to vet, riding lesson, violin lesson, grocery shopping), but I hope I can get some prep done on the Nature in Lit on Saturday, as a Christmas gift to myself. But if I don't have the oomph for it, so be it. Somehow it will all come out right in the end. It always does.
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