People, we were supposed to have another tenure meeting here ---- at a cc, you don't have research expectations so you get measured by being observed a fuckton of times and have a pile of meetings. Anyway, I was supposed to be called in for the second half of the meeting and it went on so long that they asked me if they could move the meeting with me to another day when they were free. I assume that this is bad news. It also instantly took all the relaxation and joy out of my vacation I had just come back from and put me right back at the same level of stress as before leaving. Ugh.
And of course I haven't applied out for anything because I assume, what with the continued decline of English jobs and all, that having no publications from the last 5 years and tons of teaching, esp. at a cc, makes me not competitive for university jobs. And it is not yet the season for community college job apps, which I think I would be competitive for. Ugh. In the good news, The Hot Place is being pounded by rain. We don't do things by halfsies here, that's for sure.
Also, I should be just pounding through these annotated bibliographies I just got but so many of the students in this early morning class didn't even try to do the assignment correctly --- note to self: don't let them know you are going to let them revise until they have handed in the assignment --- that I have sputtered to a stop. I sure hope the other classes are better.
And while I am complaining, today I once again had a bad intro to the novel day in my other comp class. I'm just not used to lecturing after a semester of really putting the discussion on them, or more exactly, they couldn't handle staying awake and doing a more lecture-based discussion after a semester of them doing group work and worksheet questions. But I know that since they had just turned in a paper to me over break, I can't expect them to be up on the reading (some of them were, it was clear, but it was also clear that a lot were seeing the first page of the novel for the first time when I read it to them. I had this same problem teaching the novel before ---- and I sorta fixed it for last spring but that was a MWF schedule and I had to change everything yet again back to the T/Th schedule format.
I'd think more about how to fix that but I am teaching different classes next semester ---- you know when those syllabi are supposed to be due to the printshop? Yesterday! Ugh! We did a new thing where their enrollment times are waaaaaay earlier in the semester (I guess to capture higher enrollment, but how many of those students will get dropped from those classes when they fail the prereq and need to take it over again?) and so for some reason that means the syllabi also need to be submitted super early. Since all I needed to do was update the dates on the schedule for the froshcomp class, I turned that in, but I have barely even started thinking about the two new-to-me classes yet! I haven't even read through all the textbook yet!!
Don't even get me started on the emails pouring in. Most of them I am quite glad to see, because it is a sign that the student has really started taking the research project seriously, but when I get a dislike of a student or we have a rough interaction, and then they email me, it affects how I approach my inbox. I start to get procrastinatory and avoid the whole situation. I know, I know, this is a very bad habit. Sigh. I should close up the blogging for the night and force myself to cull through my emails and send some reasonably timely replies.
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