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....

Oops, a little distraction there...

I'd meant to be finished with everything (including fiddle practice) by now, but I got side-tracked. I was checking several things online, including work emails, and there was a lovely P.S. from a colleague, praising the whole group of us who run the major functions of the department (Cathy, Bob--soon to be replaced by Paul, Brian--who heads Placement--and the summer Placement coordinator Johanna), and in a sort of "aw, shucks" response, I was moved to quote the Pogo cartoon strip character Bun Rab, who is awfully proud of his job carrying the hose...

That pretty well sums up my job. Notice that Bun Rab doesn't actually put out the fire; he just wants everyone to notice that he does, in fact, carry the hose. Bun Rab, c'est moi.

Despite the distraction, however, and the fact that I didn't get started until much later than I'd hoped, I managed to make genuine forward progress. Part of why I was so easily distracted by the urge to find the particular book of Pogo cartoons in my lovely collection (thanks, Sam Sandoe) is I had started to bog down in the organizational streams of making sure I have all the bits and orts for each step of the process from first handouts to final, that they're all up to date, have a minimum of howling errors, and are saved as PDFs, for easier access by my students online. But I think I'm in pretty good shape with the 101s now. Having that assignment schedule finally nailed down makes everything else infinitely easier.

However, I did discover that there is a boo-boo in the official academic calendar. Tuesday/Thursday classes meet 30 times, as they should, but Monday/Wednesday classes meet 31 times. (I didn't look to find out if classes that "break the grid" meet the requisite number of times because I'm not teaching any of those, so I don't really care.) Of course, it's possible I misread the calendar, but I checked it four times, and I swear I'm not missing a "Wednesday is a Tuesday" or a "Classes will not meet" thing. I see some of that going on with evening classes, but not day. I've mentioned it to P&B, but if I have to tear those schedules apart again...

Well, that's a worry for another time.

I also feel a slight lessening of pressure and panic because the friend I was going to go to the beach with tomorrow ended up having to work--so I have the day with no other commitments in which I can grind away, making (please heaven) further progress. Maybe I can even really have the classes for fall completely nailed down (except, of course, for the changes I will make on the fly, which always happen) and can then turn my attention to the online Nature in Lit. I also realized that the entire week after contract signing, classes won't have started yet, so I'll have all that time to work as well. The schedule is weird because Sept. 1 is a Friday, so that's when the semester starts--but because classes start that week, adjunct contracts are officially due the week before. Of course, we'll still be changing contracts all the way through that week, but I don't think I'll have to be on quite the same high alert as I'll need to be next week and the following.

But it's now well after 8 p.m., and if I'm going to get a decent night's sleep tonight, I can't keep noodling around on the computer--or practice fiddle. I feel a trifle guilty about that, but maybe I'll manage to practice twice tomorrow, or put in one much longer practice.

For now, I'm wrapping up the work day and putting a big bow on it. And I'll continue to carry the hose.

Progress again ... I think

I think--I hope--I have the syllabus for the 101s finally worked out and finalized. Yesterday I reconfigured when the assignments fall, which was made easier by the realization that I really didn't want to use one of the readings I'd assigned for the first essay. Ditching that made it more feasible to tighten up the first few weeks--and after that, getting the essays to fall on Wednesdays and having room for conference weeks turned out to be remarkably easy. I printed the revised thing out last night, and first thing today, I went through it, fixing mistakes, adding a few readings (too good to pass up), clarifying things (well, clearer to me; I have no idea how students will feel about it).

The result is 22 pages long. Holy fucking god. But it includes everything possible to defend me against grade grievance--which, viewed from a more positive light, means it includes everything students could possibly want or need to know about what is expected of them. (By way of contrast, the SF syllabus is 16 pages long--but I don't have to deal with discussion boards or other assignment wrinkles with that class.)

Twenty-two pages. I wonder how many students will flee the class just getting that syllabus.

I'm now going through the assignment schedule, one day at a time, to make sure I have the handouts needed and that I'm happy with them the way I have them. It did take me a while today to do the math on the points for various assignments. Since I ditched the "preliminary" essay assignment I did last time I taught the class (opting for conferences instead), I had to spread out 300 points across everything else--and I didn't want the essays to count for quite so much of the total. But I think the points values are appropriate for each assignment, which is the main thing: low stakes versus high stakes--and recognizing, for instance, that the students won't put as much time/energy into the editing step as they probably should, so that won't be worth as many points as last time.

As I gradually get all this under control, I hope my sleep improves. I had another bout of insomnia last night, though it was not as fierce as the night before. I'm calling a halt to the work relatively early this evening largely because my mental abilities are rapidly shutting down (hitting those walls), but also because 1. I want to wind down earlier than I have been, in hopes of a better night of sleep, and 2. I want to put in some time on the fiddle. My lesson is being moved up to Thursday, so I need to get in as much practice as possible before then.

Which is what I'm about to do, actually: practice some music. I hope I can get a good amount of work done both before and after my doctor's appointment tomorrow. I should have scheduled it for later in the day (or earlier), instead of at 1, but ah well. Tomorrow will take care of itself. The only thing I need to do now is get off the computer, move all my stacks of paper so I can get into my closet and into my bed (when it's time), and embark upon my evening--tomorrow being another day, and all that.

I'll regret this in the morning

I had an awful night of sleep last night, for reasons that are completely mysterious. When I finally did fall truly asleep, I ended up sleeping very late--and since then, I've been unable to get my ass in gear to do any work of any kind whatsoever. I did check enrollment numbers, which have improved ever so slightly (and interestingly, the student whom I've called "Rose in Bloom" had signed up for SF initially--one of the first people to register--but now is not in the class any more). That's a good sign, though I'm still prepared for the possibility that I may end up tearing my schedule up in order to teach a section of 101 that's sure to run. I'll know more next week, when Cathy and I start on adjunct scheduling.

So, I've been doing everything except work today--and suddenly, now that the feasible window for work is getting very small indeed, I realize how little time I have before classes start, and how much time I still need to get everything ready for the 101s in particular. Cue wave of panic.

Given the situation, I'm posting in advance of working, as a way to rev my engines, as it were. I know that even doing a tiny bit of work--specifically, resolving the problem of how/when to schedule the essay assignments for the 101s, even if I do nothing else (and even if I change my mind another five times about what makes sense as a resolution) will help calm the panic.

I'll post tomorrow, I expect, and I expect that tomorrow I'll post as usual after the work is done, instead of before. But it interests me that sometimes it takes a modicum of panic to push me through a blue mood and into productivity. Today would be one of those days.

Off I go to reconceptualize...

Oh, argh

I have conflicting desires for what I want to do with the 101s, and it's making scheduling around the essays ridiculously complicated.

I realized that, in constructing the assignment schedule, I needed to start from when the various essay steps would be due, then fit in everything else around that. I've scrapped the preliminary essay step that I did last time I taught 101; I liked it, as it let students test-drive ideas before they got too far into their essays--but I just can't figure out how to squeeze that step in (not with time to read the essays, respond, and get them back to students) and still do conferences. And in fact, I'm not entirely sure I can do conferences, unless I really tighten up on the reading schedule--but I'm afraid students will implode if I do that. (They may implode anyway.) At the moment, I only have one class day that I can devote to conferences for each essay--if I still have them work on editing in class. I suppose I could have them do that editing step on their own. In fact, the more I think about that, the more I think it might be better to give them a clear assignment for what's required in the editing stage and let them work on that part on their own while I focus on revision--which is always a much harder concept. Or I could skip a formal editing step, though I like making sure they understand it as an important step but a separate one from revision.

Oh, Christ, it's just all such a hairball in my mind right now, I don't know how to get it sorted out. I really do want to do conferencing with them, and I want to do it for all three essays. And to do that, I need time to read and respond to essays. Doing my evaluation and commenting online does streamline the process for me, as I can get essays to students more easily (though it doesn't save any time, really, as the impulse to comment at length is too hard for me to resist). But I need to think very carefully about how to schedule the turn-around time so I don't completely lose my mind. And I think I need more time. At the moment, the schedule has me collecting essays on Mondays and starting conferences on Wednesdays--and that's just a really, really, really bad idea. I need to give myself the five days over the weekend to grade stuff. So, I have to either ditch readings, load up on what's due in any particular day, or ... something.

So, I keep moving things around--and of course, along the way, I'm making adjustments to other assignment sheets to try to make them fit with the new procedures--and the chains of things I have to keep track of get longer and longer.

I do realize that all of this is self-imposed, of course. I do all this changing of how I teach because I want to feel good about what I'm doing, to apply what I think I've learned from successes (and failures) past, so there's a better chance of students doing better work. In other words, I put myself through a lot of stress and anxiety formulating processes and procedures in order to attempt to reduce stress about the quality of the work I receive, as the frustration of reading absolute, unmitigated crap seems more painful, in the long run, than the frustration of what I'm doing right now (revamping, trying to make all the pieces still fit in the frame).

I didn't get in a lot of hours of work today, which wasn't hugely surprising. I hope that allowing things to simmer on the back burner until Sunday will lead to some clarity--or at least a potentially good idea or two. I didn't work at all yesterday (prior to my doctor's appointment, I was doing what my father called "fiddle-farting"--which has nothing to do with the horrible noises I make when I practice violin--and after the appointment, it was late enough that I didn't dare embark on more work). The one thing I did was go to the post office--and of course, since on Wednesday I had broken down and bought the damned handbook, it was delivered to the P.O. Box yesterday. (And I owe the post office a minor apology: it seems as if, this time at least, the slow delivery wasn't because they misplaced the thing but because it wasn't shipped until much later than I expected.) Still, I now have a copy of the book for here and one for the office (though it really isn't substantially different from the old one, there are some small page number adjustments).

And now it's time for me to pack my little bags and head off for my regularly scheduled Friday personal enrichment activities. I won't be checking in tomorrow but should be back posting on Sunday, good Lord willin' and all like that.

Please help satisfy my curiosity

My readership has suddenly increased this year--and has reached new highs over the summer. I still only have a few official followers (which is fine; I know, among other things, that becoming a follower requires a Google account of some kind)--but apart from those five faithful readers, and a few others I know about (colleagues and friends), I don't know who is reading my blog or why.

So, if you're not someone I know--or if you are someone I know but you haven't let me know you read the blog--I'd love it if you'd leave a quick comment telling me what brought you to the blog and why you're interested. If you also would like to say a little something about whether you read regularly or just stumbled across it once and check in on occasion, that would be interesting, too. Please use the "Comment" function below. And thanks for reading!

Shifting gears--and hitting the wall

The good news is that I finally have the correct version of the handbook, so I can work on the 101 syllabus using the correct page numbers and adding review of the Sentence Guides. What I like about the Sentence Guides is that they're not nuts and bolts of GSP (grammar, spelling, punctuation) but rather examples and tips for constructing sentences to present an argument and use sources appropriately. It's astonishing how basic it has to be for students--somehow I learned this stuff by osmosis, and I have no idea how--but examples include "Presenting what is known or assumed," "Presenting others' views," "Presenting your own views: agreement and extension," and so on. There are "fill in the blank" type examples, so students can see what academic language looks and sounds like. Conceptually, I like it a lot. It remains to be seen whether students can glean from the material what I hope they can.

I got the handbook, by the way, by going to the bookstore on campus and buying a copy. (The rank incompetence of my post office strikes again.) I actually bought two copies: one I donated to the library, so I know for certain that it will be on reserve for students when the semester starts. But as I was walking around campus, I suddenly realized a few small changes I wanted to make to the SF syllabus, as well as to incorporate into the 101 syllabus. One had to do with letting students know that I am not instantly available when they email me. (They're so used to the instant reply of texts--or emails, received on their phones--that it takes a lot of repeating before they understand that, if they contact me immediately before class, I probably won't get the message until after class, and sometimes long after class.) The other had to do with point value for the handbook review assignments. They're very low stakes, but I also want them to have enough points attached that students do them. I changed the points from 10 to 15 for each review--but that meant changing the syllabus, changing the assignment handout, and changing the grade calculation sheet, as well as uploading all the changes to Blackboard. (Seems like I made other changes as well: it feels like I re-uploaded the syllabus three times....)

Thinking about the schedule also made me think about what to do with the SF students the second day of class. There may be new students (through add/drop, or simply students who weren't there the first day), and I don't want anything substantive to be due--I'm going to ease them into the work of the semester a tiny bit more gradually than usual--but I need to do something on that day that will make sense for the students who were in the first class. I thought about showing a YouTube video about the value of SF (and found one that isn't bad), or showing a short SF movie (I didn't get far in the search, being very disappointed with what I first found). Neither option is floating my boat at the moment, so I'll have to keep thinking.

The idea of showing something in class also triggered an "Oh, right, and I need to..." thought: I need to put in the request to have the computer and projector up and running for every session of 101. I won't use that tech every session, but it helps to have it there for spur-of-the-moment demonstrations.

So, the chain of things to tend to keeps getting longer, and what I've actually accomplished feels correspondingly less significant. But I do know I'm making something akin to progress. And since I got about five hours of sleep last night (and not very good sleep at that), I can feel my mind shutting down all higher functions. I have about enough left in me to write an email or two; then I will decidedly be stick-a-fork-in-me done. My work day tomorrow will be interrupted by an afternoon doctor's appointment, and then I'll have the usual limited time on Friday, no time Saturday--and here we go 'round the prickly pear. All of that, however, is the future, which does not exist. Now, I'm closing up the intellectual shop for the day (and hoping for better sleep and a more productive day tomorrow).