The gamble paid off--so I'm rolling the dice again

The gods smiled on me in Advisement today: there were very few students, so not only was I able to get all the papers marked for today's 102, I had time to also slap grades on the miscellaneous homework I had in hand and eat a quick lunch while chatting with Paul. It was so successful, I'm going to try the same thing tomorrow. Right at the moment I have four papers in hand for tomorrow's 102, plus a very few homework assignments. I also have a few little bits and orts for Nature in Lit, but if I can't get those back to students tomorrow, no harm, no foul. I did tell them that we'd spend the period talking about papers, but mostly I expect that they'll need to be thinking about future papers or about revisions; I have two mini-papers from students who got them done according to a previous due date (I've changed their schedule so many times we're all losing track of what's due when), but since I don't have them all, I don't feel compelled to get those two back to the students. We'll get done whatever, and I can always spend a little time in class setting up the last fiction selection, Le Guin's story "May's Lion." I don't know why students tend to struggle with it, but they do--so I'm hoping a little set-up will help.

I do have a meeting tomorrow (Academic Standing, the college-wide committee to which I am the English department's elected representative), and I may see a student or two during my office hour, but I'm still gambling on being able to get marked what is absolutely necessary for tomorrow's classes. It's almost certain that I won't be able to work on summer schedules in addition to getting that marking done--but stranger things have happened.

Two items of good news.

1) The contract was ratified--and by an overwhelming majority. There are still people in our department howling about it, and long e-mail "conversations" in which everyone and their entourage seems to feel a need to weigh in on whether the contract is good, whether booing was the appropriate response to the person who stood up in the meeting to lambaste the union leadership and everyone voting for the contract, blah blah blah. What do I care. We have a contract. We don't have to teach five classes. I can go up for promotion--and if I don't get it, it won't be because there isn't a contract that allows for promotions but because the consensus is that I don't deserve it. (I can live with the latter; the former would drive me batshit.)

2) The lumpish student I've been trying to chase out of today's 102--trying since February, I think--finally realized that he really doesn't have a prayer and withdrew. There's a relief.

Tonight's observation was also fine: the teacher is gifted and doing a great job with a difficult class: students in remedial writing classes who are deemed worthy by their professors are given the chance to test out of the remedial course half-way through the semester, and she's teaching the subsequent do-a-whole-semester-of-101-in-half-a-semester class for students who were successful. We had a pleasant discussion after the class, too. Now all I have to do is write the damned thing up. And do my write-up of last week's observation--after I conference with that professor on Friday. I'll spend the entire day on campus on Friday, in fact: there's the big, annual Assessment symposium for most of the day, and then I'll hang around the office--working--until the adjunct shows up for our conference about her class.

I still have more Taskstream work to finish up (gack) and I'm metaphorically crawling around on my hands and knees, looking for those pearls that have rolled behind the furniture and fallen through the cracks--but the end gets closer each day, for which let me offer thanks and praise. By the last week in May, I'll feel like I've been run through a mangle, but sometimes it's actually quite wonderful that time just keeps rolling along (kinda like Ole Man River).

I should note, quickly, that I've become aware of a trend that I'd like to counteract: the more tired I am, the more likely I am to stay in the office noodling around instead of just getting myself home. I feel a powerful urge to noodle, but I am resisting--and will herewith end this post. Abruptly.

and yet another calculated risk

I made the decision this morning to work on the summer adjunct schedules instead of marking student papers--largely because I felt I needed my brains as sharp as possible for that task. Even at that, I was struggling to make sure I didn't make any howling blunders (and may still have made some, despite my best efforts, given how swirly my mental state is). I also realized that, although there was a big meeting to accompany the vote on contract ratification, I didn't need to attend the meeting: all I had to do was go, receive my ballot, vote, and split.

Now we hold our breath to see if the contract gets ratified: some of our own are making noises about voting against it--which would be a fucking disaster. We may be seeing the thin edge of the wedge, the camel's nose under the tent flap, as these colleagues argue, but I think we need to be extremely careful, as if this contract is not ratified, we may be back to facing a 5/5 load--and if that happens, you can bet that the people who are ranting about the current proposed contract and the uselessness of our union will be screaming loudest while we all twist in the wind.

However, because I didn't have to stay for the meeting (and was very glad to skip the bloviation-fest), I was able to mark a few papers prior to P&B. I only got one paper late: if anyone else has a paper to submit for tomorrow's class, they've simply missed the boat and will have to take the whopping penalty to their revision grade. The upshot of that is, I don't have much to mark tomorrow--and I'm going to believe that I can get it done in the time I'll have before Advisement and after, if not during the Advisement hours.

So, I'm taking the calculated risk of not doing any more paper marking tonight. There are also logs to mark and return, but since the students have already written their papers, I don't feel any particular urgency to get those back. If I can do it before class, golden. If not, enh.

Today's class got into a briefly lively discussion about one point in the novel--lively primarily because the students were engaged in writing their papers on the topic and so wanted to share what they've been working on--but apart from those few minutes, the class was typically deadly. Five students were there. Three had papers ready. One student already has essentially told me that she won't be turning in her first version at all; in the past, that would have meant failure in the class, but now it simply means that whopping penalty, as noted above. (This, by the way, is the student who was very clear in her initial self-evaluation that she hates English classes--and she's done everything in her power to not do the work and self-sabotage all semester long.) One student was completely AWOL (the one remaining male student in the class). But at most, I'll have seven papers to mark for that class, so I'm relatively confident I can get those done before Thursday's class, even if I spend a little more time on Thursday morning working on those adjunct schedules.

On a more pleasant note, the discussion in Nature in Lit was pretty good. I asked them to tell me what had gone on with the wonderful sub on Thursday, and they got relatively excited about recapping what he'd done. For instance, he'd brought in a dandelion blossom and asked them to consider how they'd react to it if they'd never seen one before--had never seen any kind of flower before. He also had them debate the two philosophies that are in conflict in the narrative--and to consider the metaphoric levels of the text. They're thinking on a much better level; the two young women who are most shaky in terms of their grasp of how to approach the work of the class both came up with great points today, so I could offer them praise, which always feels great to be able to do.

Today's interviews were also interesting, though the process felt extremely rushed and chaotic. We still haven't figured out how to handle the interviews via Skype--but I'm simply not going to bring it up. Let someone else have the realization that we have a problem; I'm tired of being the one trying to head trouble off at the pass instead of blundering into it. Either that or there truly isn't a problem, or someone else has already come up with a solution, and I needn't worry.

And I don't need to worry for a while anyway; I don't think we have any Skype interviews until May 13, so there's plenty of other stuff to focus on without those concerns getting in my way. I'm blissfully blanking out pretty much anything other than whatever is directly under my nose. I can only do one thing at a time anyway, and if there are any "oh shit!" moments between now and the end of term, so be it. I'm not going to get my shivvies in an uproar (to steal a little lingo from Farscape).

Instead, I'm going to trail off home--and may even (glory be!) reset the alarm from 6 to 7 for tomorrow morning. I drool with desire at the thought of day after day of being able to sleep as much as I want. Soon, Prof. P, soon.

Yet another attack of the "shoulds"

I "should" be evaluating papers. I have approximately zero time between now and Wednesday's class in which to mark the first versions of final papers for today's 102, and yet, I find that I'm doing anything but marking. I have no clue where I'll squeeze in the time to do them--along with getting rolling on the summer adjunct scheduling, which I really do need to work on this week--because of the usual obligations (meeting tonight with my Chinese student "conversation partner"; P&B, in which we'll be conducting interviews for job lines that may never materialize; Advisement; another observation; other meetings...).

Speaking of meetings, the good news is that a tentative contract agreement has been reached, and tomorrow there will be a meeting about the proposed contract and a ratification vote. It seems that at the Nth hour, the cavalry--in the form of our inestimable Bruce--had to ride in and support the union in its fight to maintain the English department's work load: the threat of a 5/5 load has been averted for now. For years, the contract language has stated that we'd have three non-classroom contact hours, unscheduled but nevertheless kept, but that's never been monitored or enforced. Of course some of us--Paul, for instance--probably exceed that requirement in a week of conferencing, but the agreement that saved the day was that a process will be hammered out to ensure that we hold such hours. There's a fair amount of brouhaha in the department about what that means (and some interesting interpretations of the requirement, which I believe are completely erroneous, in particular the notion that we'd be meeting with random students rather than having additional time with students from our individual classes). Still, the financial and other contractual concessions are all reasonable, in my estimation, so although it's possible that there will be a huge uprising of faculty from other departments saying they want a better deal and demanding that we be thrown to the wolves if that's what it takes to get it, I think we're going to come through this OK.

However, tomorrow's union meeting means that the Chancellor's Award committee can't meet, and we're supposed to be collecting and beginning to evaluate the next crop of applications. I wrote a message to the chair of the committee about that--and apparently there is some confusion about whether I'm even on the committee. I should be: I was appointed in 2012 for the typical two-year term, but if I'm not, I'll happily bail on any further work. On the other hand, if I am officially part of the committee, I need to be ready to join in on the final push--and that means finding time for still more work.

In any event, all this means I can't opt to mark papers during "club hour" tomorrow, because that's when the contract meeting will be held, and I can't bail on P&B, because we'll be interviewing. So, when the hell will I mark those papers? Especially as I will get another batch of them tomorrow--not to mention at least three, possibly four, from today's students that will be submitted late. I have another meeting on Thursday that I can't miss, but there are fewer students in the Tuesday/Thursday class, so I'm less concerned about that. It's really getting through the papers for Wednesday that has me flummoxed.

Ye gods. The sudden end-of-term collision of committee obligations with student papers is causing quite the maelstrom in my already addled psyche. If nothing else, it looks like I'm setting the alarm for 6 (maybe, shudder, even earlier) the next few mornings, and praying that Advisement is as quiet on Wednesday as it was today, though the spites of life almost certainly will determine that since I had a quiet day today, when I had no work to do, I will be mobbed with students on Wednesday, when I'll be frantically looking for a few more hours. Ah well.

Today's class was pretty good. The one young woman who contributes to discussion was absent (again), but all the intelligent young men were there and in good form. We're all getting a little lumpy at this point, but they're still working on a beautifully sophisticated level. When the conversation about the end of the novel dried up, I asked the students how they felt about their papers, and most of them said they hated them and were sure I would, too. I said that what's happening is that they've lost confidence--which is appropriate, as they've let go of old, bad habits, but they're not yet sure what the new habits feel like, so they doubt everything, and are probably harder on themselves than I will be. I told them that what they're feeling is an indication that they're learning. Indeed, for the last five days, I've had a wonderful exchange of e-mails with the most quiet of the bright young men, and I had the distinct pleasure of being able to tell him that his struggle to write his way into a good idea is excellent, that he is doing exactly and precisely what real academic work entails. I couldn't be more delighted and proud of him--and I told him so. Addressing the whole class, I promised that I'll focus primarily on telling them what works best, and why. I tend to forget that focusing on what works (rather than on the vast amount of bilge that doesn't) also helps improve my mood as I read their papers. Perhaps not a lot, but some.

But not tonight. On top of everything else, last night I didn't turn the light out until almost 1 a.m. and then was wide awake at 5:30, finally gave up on trying to go back to sleep at 6:30 (utterly maddening). So, I'm hoping if I gently roll home in a minute here, I'll be able to do an efficient down shift (bringing the speeding semi to a halt) and get my little self into bed early enough that a 6:00 alarm won't be, well, alarming.

Celebrating the minor miracles

I just went trudging across campus to retrieve one of my water bottles, which in my typically absent-minded state I had left in a classroom, and I was mulling over what to put in today's post. I was feeling systemically grumpy--both classes were deadly dull, and adding to the insult, there is a ton of P&B work to be done before the end of the semester, not to mention an even larger steaming pile of work to be done for Assessment (not to mention the 600 kinds of computer hell I'm in at the moment because of various updates that simply make things stupid if not outright impossible)--but then I thought, "Well, I have all the assignments marked for all my classes." And I realized that is a rare and beautiful thing.

I have turned over every piece of paper I've received from students either to the students themselves or to the subs who will be covering my classes the next two days. So I have nothing at all in my hands from students.

Let us savor the moment.

I can also add that the subs won't be collecting much, if anything, so I won't come back to campus on Monday to face a stack of student work that needs to be tended to. There may be one or two bits that trickle in, but nothing much. And from here on, it's mainly their papers.

I can't even get my knickers in too large of a knot over the paper grading that will fill the rest of the semester for me: I have, I believe, a grand total of 22 students left--and that's all three classes together. That's less than full enrollment in one class, never mind three. I do still wince and writhe more than a little under the knowledge that I've lost so many, have so few left, but as always, the upside is that I have that much less work to do. I really can't complain too much (if at all) about the work load in terms of my classes.

Committee work is a different matter--and is driving me relatively bats. Today's P&B was mercifully very brief (which allowed me to grade one paper I wasn't sure I was going to get to)--but our next meetings, and the Tuesday after the semester ends, we'll be interviewing job candidates. We still haven't figured out how to conduct Skype interviews, or when those will be scheduled, and the whole process may be entirely moot anyway, as Bruce suddenly is a lot less confident than he's been that he'll be able to secure any lines in which to hire anyone.

On the other hand, he did suggest that we'll have a contract soon--and he didn't seem miserable about what the contract might contain. I don't know that I'm prepared to hold my breath on that one, as he is often overly confident that all will turn out well and soon, but if he is right, well, that would be a relief to say the least.

Right now, however, all I really want to do is tidy up the little stacks of whatever that are swirling around my various work spaces and go away until next Monday. It would be nice if I could also do that without having an anxiety attack, but apparently my body has decided that it hasn't felt anxious enough today, so it's taking this opportunity to stir up a nice jolt of adrenaline. But no matter what I do tonight, or what happens between now and the end of the term, I will not cause the end of the world. As the Cockneys would say, it will all be the same in a thousand years. So really, who gives a rat's petite patoot? I am out of here for five days. Huge sigh of relief.

Another quickie

This will be fast, partly because I don't have much to report (another dud of a class) and partly because I have a date tonight and need to get the hell out of here. Let this be about class chemistry, and the need for a certain critical mass of alert and vocal intelligence in the room. Despite the presence of several bright students, we were missing some of the more vocally intelligent, so even the young woman who can add significantly to the class dynamic was unable to lift the discussion, as she was pretty much trying to do so alone.

And one lump finally got the message that he is not doing what he needs to do and asked if he could withdraw. It was all I could do not to say, "God, yes!!! I've been waiting for you to do this for months now...."

I cannot wait for this term to finish. The whole thing feels snake bit. But I am taking two more days off this week (for fun, dammit), and then there are simply three weeks to go--and surely I can survive that.

There's probably more I could talk about, but I'm so grouchy about the whole things that I'm not even going to try to find a silver lining or a happy thought with which to reframe the day. I could, but it would take more time than I want to devote to it.

I'm outta here.

Ultra-fast post

I want to get out of here, but I also want to make a point of recording a wonderful moment today. One of my students in Nature in Lit has struggled all semester, having a very difficult time letting go of the only way she knew how to approach literature and learn something new--but she refused to give up, and not only did she come to me more than once for help, she also has been taking advantage of the Writing Center. She came to the office today with her paper--and she's got it, by George she's got it. I haven't read the entire paper, so there may be problematic areas, but her entire approach has shifted and she's now doing exactly the right stuff. I'm so proud of her, and I told her she should be very proud of herself. It's a hell of a big break-through, and I couldn't be more happy. And she deserves the credit: she persevered, and that was the key. She listened; she learned. She worked her ass off.

This, my friends, is why I teach.

There's more to report, so I may do a rare Friday post tomorrow--but now, the highway calls, and I must go.

Call it a day

That's about the best that can be said for it: it was a day. Nothing bad happened--I don't have anything to bitch about, really--but nothing noteworthy happened either. It just was ... a day. I got here later than usual, allowing myself a little extra sleep, as I didn't have a ton of work to try to shove through before class, so I pretty much went straight to Advisement. It was quiet enough when I first got there that I did get a few assignments marked, which ended up being a good thing, as otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to pay as careful attention to what I was reading, would have had to grade at a glance, as it were. But it picked up, and then there was a steady stream of students--which is fine by me, if I'm not frantic with grading to do, as it certainly makes the time go faster. The students I saw today were all reasonably intelligent, reasonably able to understand what I told them, reasonably prepared to do their own part in determining their educational course. So, good.

Class was a bit flat, simply because of the lack of bodies in the room: it's interesting to me how, even when the intelligent bunch are there, the mere fact that there is less human presence reduces the energy level. Still, we were getting into some good philosophical discussion, working on the ideas in the novel, not just who did what, when and where.

I have the assignments marked for tomorrow's 102--and I was about to embark on the assignments for Nature in Lit when I realized that I had read a sentence several times and had no clue whether it made sense or not. As I have special company coming in to town tonight--a guest who may come to campus with me tomorrow and who will be with me through the break and beyond--there's a good chance I won't get those assignments marked until after the break, but I don't think the students will suffer any by not having the material returned to them. I'll just have a bigger stack of stuff to deal with when I get back.

Meanwhile, my brains are decidedly switching off work mode; I'm experiencing the mental equivalent of white noise and honestly can't think of another thing to report or record. I may not post tomorrow--so there probably will be a hiatus in the postings until, again, after the break. Once we're back, it will definitely be "hold on to the safety bar and scream" time, so the staggering lassitude I feel right now is bound to be replaced with manic energy. Tonight, however, I'm going to slouch on out of here.