So, advise me, blogosphere

I have this student, we'll call him Skippy. Skippy is a middle-of-the-pack kind of student. Some things he's better than some of the other students. Other things he's just not.

Skippy is EXTREMELY grade conscious. He wants every tittle and jot of every single assignment spelled out in such a way that it basically makes a contract that if Skippy does A, B, and C, Skippy gets an A+. When things don't go exactly, precisely Skippy's way, he has this little frustration breath sound that he makes. Loudly (readers who have ever had pre-teens, you know what I mean).

I've tried to be positive - really I have. i have reminded myself that being a little vague on assignments is a career-long weakness of mind. I have reminded myself that being really, really, super clear on directions is benefitting all of my students. I have found out Skippy's interests and pretended they are interesting to me to. I've made small talk. I haven't been snippy - not even once.

Today, I gave back grades an assignment Skippy got a B+ on. Since Skip didn't succeed at two major components of a 9-component assignment, I thought this was more than generous.

In the back of the room, I overhear the sound, followed by "I just think she grades me really harshly. I'm going to talk to the program director."

I dislike Skippy. Really, I do.

What should I do? I feigned temporary deafness, and reminded all the student that I will be most happy to meet with them to go through their projects in excruciating detail. But is that the right approach?

So you're happy right?

One of the downsides to spending T-giving with Spouse's family was having to answer the question set multiple times:

1. So you're really happy with your new job, right?
2. Aaaaaand, it's much better than your old job, right?
3. Aaaaaand, it's a better university, right? (debatable - better in some ways, including my area, though)
4. So, it was all worth making everyone else move, right?

I had to exercise some self control to not say

So, you're happy that we live a lot closer and you can see your grandkids more often, right?
Aaaaaaand, you realize that for the past 11 years, it has cost us $1,000-$1,500 each and every time we came to see you, right?

I came, I ate, I'm ready to go home

Spent the holidays at the in-laws, who now live 2 1/2 hours away. It's the first Thanksgiving we've ever spent with them, since we've always felt like this holiday is not one that's worth traveling for due to the short duration and difficulties of traveling. SOOOOOOOOO nice to be living where we are and be able to get where we are going in the time it used to take us just to get to the airport.

We went to a resort town a few hours away yesterday, Spouse and the girlies did Magiquest while M-I-L and walked around the little shopping mall attached. I am a diehard NO BLACK FRIDAY shopper, but I did actually find a few gifts. Being in the resort area, it wasn't actually crowded at all.

For Christmas, we're going to my folks, and taking the train. We're all pretty excited about that, too. It takes about the same time as driving, costs 1/4 of flying and leaves 15 minutes from our house, out of a station with free parking.

I have done 0 grading or class planning since Monday, but I think I'll be busy, but ok this week.

Bun's birthday this week, and 2 of the last 3 meetings of each of my classes.

Happy Birthday to me

Starting the day with being awake at 2:30 a.m. by allergies != fun. But, today is the last day of classes before Thanksgiving break, and I have a class that goes until 4, so I am bringing them cupcakes. Do you think it would be too obvious if I passed out the evaluations right after ; )

Another sign that I am not at PrettyGood any more: In my box today, a card signed by the President of the university. Wow.

Drive-by

Had my drive-by evaluation today - boss-type person comes and sits in my class for one day, writes up some comments, we talk, yada.

I have two sections of grad basketweaving, we'll call them the early/good section and the late/extremely distracted/irritating to me section.

Boss-type person was supposed to come to the late section, but changed at the last minute and came to the early one. Score! Plus, it didn't suck too much. Bonus!

I wonder how that will go down when he sees my crappy, crappy evaluations that I know are coming.

Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprise.

In other news:

Bun: Good news! I love you!

Left to do

Grad classes:

One class for grads before Thanksgiving (mostly ready)
64 basket projects to grade before Thanksgiving
One class for grads after Thanksgiving (thought about not complete)
One session on combining oboe and pastel drawing sometime before Dec. 1 (Help!)
7 group projects to grade
32 finals to grade

Undergrad classes:

One class for u-grads before Thanksgiving (half ready)
Two classed for undergrads (one ready, one thought about at least)
18 semester projects to grade
7 group projects to grade

Research:
One paper to submit to conference
One series of papers to send out to reviewers for conference I am coordinating

Amount of motivation: super low!

The switch

Ladies and gentlemen*,

Please make sure your are holding on to the straps. The train is about to make the switch. For the rest of the journey, the students will be doing the heavy lifting until the train is safely parked at its final destination, grading jail station.

Enjoy the rest of your ride.









*I always thought it was a little silly to call riders on a subway ladies and gentlemen, since many of them act like neither.

Do you know where your children are?

I grew up outside New York City, and there was literally a commercial asking this that came on at 6 each evening. A clock on the screen and an announcer saying "It's 6 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?"

I think parents today are in a really different place, as far as knowing how involved they are supposed to be with their kids' lives.

I mentioned earlier that I heard from one of Offspring's teachers that she is having issues at school with organization. I wrote back to say that she's always struggled with that, that I'd talked with her and we'd made some changes at home that I think will help and that I know Offspring is frustrating to have in class some times, and I appreciate her teachers working with her. I'm always careful to try to walk the line between advocating for my child and seeming like the blackhawk parent that I know educators cringe over.

Perhaps this was going too far. I got a reply from her teacher that Offspring's issues are typical in kids like her, and that she was copying her correspondence to all the other teachers. She did copy everything, but not just to Offspring's teachers, but to two people that I don't know. One of them was on the school website (name/title only), and apparently works with "exceptional children," which I think means children with mental disabilities, although I'm not sure. The other I literally had to Google and read her MySpace page (she's single and straight, btw) in order to find that she's a counselor at the school. I feel like for now I will sit on this and see what happens. I feel like if they are referring my child for counseling or "life skills training," which, in honesty might help her, they should let me know what is going on. Am I wrong about this?

Then there is this post on bullying from the New York Times. I think things are still better in Ms. Legumbre's class, mostly through the implementation of a draconian behavior management plan that is improving her control of the class (while making it really dull, but that's another issue), but Offspring is still getting threatened pretty much every day. It upsets her some, but she doesn't feel like she is actually in danger, so I'm still silent on the issue. We talk about people who have different social skills and express themselves inappropriately and about how Jr. High interactions sometimes devolve into making myself feel more important by putting down innocent people and she understands, but I still think it's difficult for her. But what's a parent to do?

RBOC for a rainy Tuesday

*I am tired of these headaches. I would like them to stop now. Please.

*In my dogged march towards an adequate end of the semester, I have 5 more classes. I might make it.

*Offspring has apparently gone off the rails with regards to being organized at school. After a report card with straight As and glowing comments about her behavior (causing me to remark to Spouse - are you sure this is our child?), I heard from 2 (!) of her teachers today, when I haven't heard from any all year.

*A job opening posted at a school Spouse would like that would be a reasonable "split the difference" kind of place for us both.

*I should be working, but this blog post is taking too long. I think it is the headache.

No work at all = much work

This morning I did my first bit of work since Thursday afternoon's class and meeting, since my parents are here. They aren't staying with us, but I have been having serial migraines pretty much every day, and have been going to bed pretty much immediately after I get back from dropping them off at their hotel - last night Spouse dropped them off and I was in bed by 9. My head doesn't hurt at present, so I am hoping to get through today pain-free. I get them in clusters like this (usually I get pain-free ones with just vision and dizziness), so I can always hope that the cluster is over.

I have a crap-ton of grading to do today (not working all weekend will do that to ya in November), but I got some encouragement from planning the last weeks of classes.

Taking many of your advices, I am pretty much in survival mode right now. I don't think there is anything I can do at this point to make the semester excellent (oh, oboe, why do you and pastel drawing have to have such a huge learning curve!), but I can at least keep it marginal, right? How's that for a goal?

On the positive side, I took my parents to look at houses around here and they seemed pretty interested.

On the negative, we had heard about a job for Spouse from a friend who works at another university a reasonable commute away, but I got an e-mail from him Friday saying his administration didn't approve a position after all.

Wednesday, fair and migrainish

6 more times for two of my classes. Hallelujah. Amen.

Tuesday, dimmer, with some mope

We got our heat fixed, which is terrific, since it has been below freezing at night since Friday, and been rather cool in the townhouse.

My classes yesterday were ok - some of the students were quite engaged, and I had the pleasurable experience of seeing that some of the students have a) learned quite a bit and b) been able to apply that in new situations. My class today was similar.

But I am getting death stares from the ones who I think I have lost forever.

Had lunch with my faculty mentor today and talked with him about my teaching woes. He didn't offer much advice aside from a) it's probably better than I think and b) the P&T committee (which he was on last year) looks for improvement and reflection as well as results.

I think I have a lot of reflecting to do!

Monday, bright and full of hope

So here we are again. I don't have classes or office hours on Fridays, and I knew I'd be in the office on Saturday, so I stayed home Friday and spent 4 hours on practicing pastel drawing and oboe and 4 hours putting stuff away in my house, so I felt a whole lot better about that. A lot of the problem is that the moving truck came 1 day before Spouse had to go to work and 3 days before I did, so there were just places (the girls' room chief among them) that just never got organized. Since we moved into about 1/2 the space we used to have, organization is really, really important.

I am still struggling with the oboe, and haven't really thought about directing at all, but I have scheduled some things to mostly give me a break from new preparation this week and I didn't have the students do their usual Friday assignment, so that saved me a bit of grading.

So I've got a week to get the academic stuff together (8 more meetings in each class!). On the bad side, my parents are coming Wednesday night, so really I've got just a couple of days. So I guess I should get on it.

Saturday evening at Chez Prof (or what nerdy families do for fun)

Bun: What's this (pointing to head)
MommyProf: Your cranium
Bun: My cray nee um, what's that?
Offspring: Your skull bone.
Bun: What's this (pointing to leg)
Offpsring: That's your femur.
Bun: Your spine goes all through your body
MommyProf: No, that's not quite right. Your spine goes down to your pelvis, then your leg bones hook to your skeleton from there.

This goes on until I draw her a skeleton with about 20 of the bones labeled, and ends up with a game of Simon says (SImon says point to your mandible).

----------------

See, it's not all bad news around here...

Smiles, everyone, smiles!

Today's activity:

Spending the day at work at the open house for the grad program that 2/3 of my load is in. Smiling.

Dear Internet, I am...

I didn't know what else to put in the title - dying? on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Sorry, but I don't have a lot of people I can talk to right now, so here is a list of RBO things that are stressing me out:

*I am spending way too much time on teaching. I don't know what it is - after 13 years, you'd think I know my way around a classroom pretty well. Ok, actually I do know what it is. It's that my classes are all really, really different from what I have done before. Imagine if you you were a physics professor and next semester found out that you are assigned to teach all biology classes because, hey, it's all science. Or that you are a composition professor, and they asked you to teach German literature in German next semester. Because hey, reading, writing, it's all the same. (Or a theatre professor now asked to take on all the trombone students. It's all performing!) Plus, I'm teaching in a brand-new grad program, so everything is a bit, shall we say, up in the air. The students are a mix of returning professionals (very skilled and serious) and fresh out of undergrad types, one of whom actually told me it's just a fifth year of college.

*My students are complaining about my grading. Usually it's not a justified complaint (I worked hard or I just want a higher grade are not convincing arguments to me...). But today's complaint, while largely all wet, does have a potential grain of truth to it. This is a problem.

*Since I was brought in as an associate prof., I was told at orientation that I was to get significantly involved in campus service immediately. But not one wants me to do much.

*Research. What's that?

*Spouse hates his job

*I have no time to clean my house, and I am worried about causing my children long-term psychological damage by growing up as they are.

*Then again, my Spouse and my children don't really do much around the house.

*Then again, Offspring has gigantic amounts of homework at present (3 hours last night and she gets home at 5:15), so it's not like I can ask her to do much. Spouse gets home at 7:45.

*The universe is conspiring to make things difficult. We had huge repairs on both cars this semester. Since Spouse is commuting to that job he hates, we can't afford to have a car fail on us. I am trying to get my kids established at a pediatrician. I had to go by and fill out paperwork to get the files transferred from the Central State doc. Did that. Tried to call for an appointment - oh, we have papers for one kid, but not the one who has to get a flu shot here, because community clinics don't give them to 3 year olds. Call the doc in Central State - we sent both kids' stuff like a month ago. In the same envelope.

*Our house has still not sold, and so money is tight. Family is starting to complain about all the beans we are eating.

*I have gained 10 pounds since we were here. Clothes are starting to not fit, and I can't get new ones (see above). Will looking like a bag lady keep me from getting tenure? (Does anybody still call them bag ladies anymore?)

*My parents are coming next week. It seemed to be a good idea at the time.

*Oh, and did I mention the teaching? It's bad. Real bad. Bad.

Nadir

So stressed about everything right now - all of us. I meet each class 9 more times.

Just for grins, I am teaching a off-site, winter minimester class, and found out last Wednesday that I have to meet them for two hours a week for the rest of the semester, starting last Thursday. Because I really did need another class.

Off to the to-do list.