Looking a gift horse in the mouth

Do your students ever give you gifts? I must admit I have never really gotten snazzy things from my students or photos at the end of the class or hugs or requests for letters of recommendation or such stuff. But this past fall semester I had that one Fruit Studies class where it was just love-y love all around. I had students make brownies and coffee one day near the end (and then, alas, top it with cocoanut --- yay, little shavings of anaphylactic death!)

And I had Crazy Retired Man Auditing Classes ---- did I tell you the funny stories about him? remind me to tell you about his rant about aliens. No, I'm not kidding. But he was a sweetheart and as long as you could keep him on track he made a lot of good contributions to the class ---- well, he was taking a pottery class along with mine and he made me a mug!  

See? It is currently decorating my office, but I don't trust his glazing skills enough to actually use it. That's ok; it's pretty. And it makes me want to take cool pottery classes every time I look at it.

This semester I have a different little sweetheart, who is out and proud and not only willing to step up and testify on that front but also bring up issues of race and social justice in the class, which is awesome. And he catches whatever little risque jokes or off-color puns I accidentally make but I don't feel like I'm about to get into trouble.

A while back he asked me some questions after class --- those questions that don't really seem to have a point except for the subtext of "I like you!" --- And I have been there with that awkward I-don't-know-what-to-say-to-a-favorite-teacher-but-I-don't-want-the-class-to-be-over situation and totally love that.

So the next day he dropped by my office hours with a big plastic shopping bag. "Dr. Cog, I just wanted to give this to you!" Awwwwww. So I opened it up, and found ...

Hmm. On the one hand, I totally appreciate this. And I drank them, so it's not like I am worried he was poisoning me or anything. Every day I'd open one and go "sweet! I don't have to spend any money on my caffeine habit!" But I also, because I have to overthink everything, wonder if this is making some sort of comment on me, or on my caffeine habit or weight or something.

But no! Stop this! Just drink your damn gifts and revel in the fact that you were offered them. If they start offering me whiskey to mix with it, that's when I know I have a problem.

I need a post-vacation vacation

I kinda hate breaks. I never get stuff done or get relaxation time. This time was compounded by the problem of getting really bad cramps --- and just a sense of exhaustion along with 'em --- in the middle of completely unscheduled free time. I think I'd rather have energy and a good feeling during my vacation time and use the busy, overscheduled teaching days to distract myself from feeling crappy. It's just too hard to concentrate and make myself work when I'm feeling bleah.

But then today I went back to school and zoooooomed through my to-do list that I had been suffering under all week! Ok, I'm not done, but I have a non-teaching day tomorrow to get back to my job apps and article and whatnot. See? It's like being on vacation is bad for me or something.

In addition to getting another pile of grading done and handed back and a lot of class org stuff done, I worked on the prompt for my comp class ---- by the way, I really don't like how they have set up a proposal/biblio/research paper structure for this class; I feel like I have been hauling ass covering all the ideas that need to get covered in order for them to propose and research a project by the due date time, and now we have the entire second half of the class to expand the completely-researched proposal into a paper that's only a few pages longer. I have all these teaching days I need to fill now! I guess I have to re-teach all the stuff I went over really fast? Meh.

On the bright side, I had a fun time teaching today and meeting back up with my students. Even the comp students, who I haven't really bonded much with this semester --- they're all pretty low-key and reserved compared to previous semesters, and with the way the research comp class is set up I don't learn as much about who they are as people and thinkers compared to the intro class. And I have such sporadic attendance in that class --- today 11 out of 24 people showed up; probably because the draft was due today.

And I brought the hammer down on two more and dealt with a student athlete meltdown as this person has just figured out that being gone on sports trips constantly has put the student behind in all classes. And oddly, I even had fun with all the student confrontations --- I just laughed at the screwups ("what do you mean you haven't started your project and you blew off your conference with me? Get yer ass into the library right this instant and turn in a list of sources by the end of the day!") and mapped out a new, doable schedule to turn in assignments for the athlete, talking that person down from complete panic (though I have doubts that this person will really pull it together). And I handed back two zero assignments with a plagiarism warning in another class, and even that didn't burst my good mood. See how weird I am? It would be a totally different situation if I didn't have alternating teaching and non-teaching days, though. I'm weird, but not that weird.

To do list update

Yesterday was one of those slow and sluggish days. I tried reading but wasn't into it, I tried knitting but only made a mess of things instead, I skipped yoga ---- by the way, after such a great fall schedule where I was regularly doing yoga and could totally feel it in my limbs and could slowly see progress in my flexibility, I have totally fallen off my good habit and have hardly done exercise at all ... I can feel my knee starting to act up again ---- and only got a little bit of article work done.

But today, TODAY! was a red-letter day. And the letter was L for laundry. I have done laundry, a bit of rewriting the beginning of my article, and also cleaned the entire downstairs of my apartment. And not just cleaned, spring cleaned. Booyah!

Now, of course, I am tired and achy enough that I should have no problem getting to sleep tonight.

And I need to get back on my pile of job applications, grade a stack of homeworks and a stack of essays, and do all sorts of prep for the week back.

Crap. I was feeling so on top of things for a minute there.

On student misreadings of the text

Do you ever have a class happen where a student proceeds to build an elaborate misreading of the text hinging on some word or detail that is not actually present, and then, when this key missing link is pointed out to them, have them stubbornly double down on the misreading like they were going out for an audition for a fire sale?








Yeah, me neither. But mainly because they don't go so far as to actually roll on the ground covered in flames. They really could learn something from that clip.

I guess there's an upside to being locked in a room for 8 hours

Although at several points during the day I felt exhausted and so wanted to go home and take a nap.

Got there promptly at 8 am, and since I had been too tired to finish grading/commenting on all the drafts the night before, I hauled ass on my grading, even though my first conference wasn't until 10. I have officemates, also conferencing, so I was using a sorta storage-closet-slash-meeting-room-slash-other people-use-it-as-a-temporary-office all day. I was feeling pretty stir-crazy by the end of the day. But! The upside is that there was *nothing* else to do, so I pushed on through all of tomorrow's drafts ---- had a couple no-shows, and all of the meetings ran short, so I had spare time. And I still had time in the afternoon, so I went back to grading that big honkin' stack of midterms I got Monday.

See? There is something to the "prison method" of to-do list productivity.

But.  I was feeling great about all that work, but then I looked at what I have left to do this week --- I need to get all those midterms finished and back, and I have both the conferences and my other classes meeting tomorrow, and I have to grade all the drafts for Thursday, and I have a bunch of job apps coming due and other stuff on Friday, and I still have to prep classes for everything. Gah! Now I don't feel like I've accomplished anything at all!

Tomorrow's conferences are sandwiched between my other classes, so I think there's going to be more running amuk and less grading. Luckily I have another "prison" day on Thursday. Yay?

I would say "just shoot me know," but instead I will count down the minutes to break.

Post-Chicken Complications

The day after I roasted the chicken --- or maybe two or three days later? --- I followed the recipe from this website and popped a can of tomatoes and all the chicken pulled off the bones and a bunch of spices that I just eyed the measurements for in to a saucepan and boiled it away for maybe 20 minutes. And it turned out quite tasty! Though I notice now, looking at the site, that he caramelized the onions with brown sugar, and that sounds lovely, wish I'd tried it.

However, today I went to roast up some potatoes and beets, and as soon as I started to preheat the oven, lots of black smoke came out the vent. That freaked me out. I hadn't even put new food in there yet. So I turned on my fan on high, and opened the window, and periodically opened the back door and waved it open and shut, all the while watching for potential creatures entering (luckily it's not mosquito season yet). and basically just suffered through it while the veggies were roasting. By the end of the time, regular steam was coming out instead of black smoke, but it doesn't look clean in there by a long shot. And I spilled some olive oil when taking out the pan.

So I went and looked up what kind of oven I have (the apartment people didn't leave me a manual) and found the manual on line. And I am totally creeped out by the health warnings they give for running the auto-clean cycle --- basically, you need to be there in case the thing catches fire, but you should have all your doors and windows open, for about three hours, and oh yeah small birds tend to die or get sick if they are in the same room, so be sure to remove all pet birds to another room or even from the house completely. Um. I am sure that anything that kills off small birds will still be doing a number on my body, and my cats' bodies, and I don't like the idea of running the autoclean cycle at all. Besides, what would I do to prevent the cats from running out one of those open doors? Yeah, I don't like the potential health hazards one bit.

But. Black smoke was pouring out my oven, you know? And it smells like a roast chicken in here, even though I was cooking vegetables. I also heard something once about a rental unit catching fire because the landlord never had anyone clean the oven and never checked if old tenants cleaned before they moved out and all the grease in there started a fire. So I think I might need to clean it --- any thoughts or advice would be appreciated!

Likewise any thoughts on how to clean my dishwasher, since the pan came out pretty clean looking and feeling once I ran the washer, but now the entire bottom of the washer is greasy and beige. I've run it twice since the chicken pan, I think, and I don't think it's getting any better. And I know from undergrad what happens if you put hand dish detergent in a dishwasher (heh heh my silly roommate's boyfriend --- it looked like an I Love Lucy episode in there!) so I'm kind of at a loss as to how to clean it.

Yes, I am a total paranoid weirdo who overthinks everything while cooking. It's not gonna change. Luckily I have spent years on learning about chopping up and cooking various vegetables, so I can make a lot of very healthy stuff without much thought or consulting of cookbooks, the internet, or various friends.

I did get a lot of grading done today. Maybe I'll be able to post a semi-interesting, semi-academic post one of these days instead of stories about chicken.

Say what? Chicken butt.

What's that? Chicken fat.

 

And here is the final roasted fowl from yesterday. Complete with yummy roasted potatoes.

 

 

They're from my phone, so not so sharp or good quality. I have the nice camera but I'm lazy enough that I went for the phone. Still haven't picked apart the rest of the leftovers and made burrito filling yet, but will probably do that tomorrow. Will let you know how it goes!