Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Hello, I should be working

but today I did a lot of planning out the next essay sequence (I'm about to get a batch of essays) and worked hard all the way past 2pm, which is my naptime, and then I did a bunch of errands and bought chips and salsa and threw approximately 80 billion loads of laundry into the machines.

So yes, I really should be doing something work-related while waiting for the laundry to be done, but damn, I have actually done some work. Let me bitch and complain instead.

I have a huge pile of homework to get through for my comp class, but I am somewhat frustrated with them already, so it is easy to procrastinate on the pile. I have quite a few clockwatchers in that class --- people who literally pack up everything and have their homework out on the desk with 20 minutes to go and they are not actually sitting in the chair but in a squat hovering above it. Stop, people! These are pretty much the same people who roll in late too. Let me guess, if I were to look up who said they are retaking this class from last semester, who would it be?

My new prep class is sweet and basically getting it and behaving like actual students for the most part ... oh yeah, I need some more funny examples of logical fallacies, if you have been watching any tv commercials lately. Pass them along! The other new class, the developmental* one, is pretty good and most of them say they want to succeed at everything but we are starting to see a divide between those who say that and those who truly believe it. Someone was just talking about those people who say they will "do whatever it takes" to make things right after making a mistake or otherwise screwing up; well, for some people that is a promise and it gets followed up by specific suggestions of what they will do, and for others that phrase is actually code and translated it just means "I'm sorry; my bad" and they don't actually mean they will do anything. Kinda like how "hey, how are you?" doesn't really mean that the other person wants to know a story. It's code.

Ugh. I am so tired. Please do all my grading and get the laundry for me. I've got naps to take and chips and salsa to eat instead.






*I know, I know! "Remedial" is no longer allowed and "developmental" is a dirty word and we are talking about removing "basic writing" as a descriptor and only talking about "noncredit" instead, but I have to call it something in writing!

1 comment:

Fretful Porpentine said...

This is really only a comment on your footnote, but the whole euphemism-treadmill thing is one of my pet peeves. It will never be a GOOD thing to be placed in remedial comp, so whatever term they pick is bound to become a dirty word after a few years, and in the meantime, it confuses the heck out of students who don't know the code. (I had one very stubborn retiree, who already had a bachelor's degree, positively insist on enrolling in Basic Writing, when I think what she actually wanted was a creative writing course.)