Checking In

Okay, so maybe I'm just not in a bloggy-space right now.

Last week, periodically I'd think of something I wanted to blog about, and then the day would mop the floor with me. The next thing I knew, it'd be half past midnight, and I barely capable of spelling my own name. And then the week was up, and I was still struggling along.

It isn't that things are going okay, though I've got one class where a literal 95 percent of my students are half-assing it so badly that they're going to be lucky to pull C's. My focus is just not where I want it. I'm trying to help the department find my replacement - an odd moment, to be sure - and I'm trying to finish setting up for the conference we're helping to co-host with the new caveats that the school we're co-hosting with has no budget and my university has given us money provided we can pay for everything before the conference actually happens (though the parts of my university that are actually involved with giving us a bill won't respond with prices).

I've also found that I've managed to - in very short order - make myself a thorn in the side of one of the more important administrators here. Mostly this seems to have happened because there comes a point in any meeting when I tired of beating around the bureaucratic bush and either ask for what I think we need or suggest what I think needs to happen. A colleague described me as "prickly" in these meetings, which made me laugh with more than a little bit of pride.

I have, though, managed to start back to the gym. I've been four times since the last post, and (of course) every time, it has been packed with my students. But that may well be the price I have to pay right now.

So that's things. I'm still committed (ish) to trying to blog fairly regullarly, but we'll see how it goes. I am, as always, open to suggestions for topics.

In Case I Was Having Doubts

It's nice when the universe (or, in this case, the university) reminds you of why you're leaving. I thought, actually, that I'd be talking about the double-edged sword of life near family and how that's playing out in my job decision.

Instead, current job complaints.

Last summer I attempted to teach a graduate course. Our department had been heavily lobbied - just short of actual pummeling - to offer graduate courses in the newly created Master's program. Of course, with our 4/4 teaching load, the only time to teach such a course was in the summer, and summer pay here isn't great. But it sounded like a fun idea, and I like even a little extra pay where I can get it, so I tried.

Getting the course off the ground was a nightmare. It meant I had to get a course through the entire review process to be put in the catalog. As is the nature of universities, this took longer than it needed to - it actually got bumped off two separate meeting agenda cycles - and it was more inconvenient then it needed to be. I was asked ridiculous questions about attendance policies, required to attend meetings where there was no discussion of my (or any) course, etc, etc, etc. When the time for the course finally came, I needed three students to be registered (or so I was told). I had two, and a third who was trying but couldn't actually - literally - register because our computer systems hadn't accounted for people entering being admitted the same week classes they were going to take would actually be starting. I met the first night with the students, and then the course was canceled because I didn't have my three students yet.

Only, it turns out, technically I didn't need 3 students. Two would have been enough, and I could have taught for tuition. When this error was caught, a plan to give some compensation to faculty was launched. Only, for some reason, faculty teaching those much sought after graduate courses weren't factored in.

"Be patient," I was told. The person who had brokered the deal was going through some issues. All would be made right. My union rep didn't - and hasn't - return my phone call. At a union meeting, I was told they were sure management would do the right thing.

This was August.

Yesterday, in my 11th follow-up to my Dean, I noted that it felt like the University was losing this, and while I understood personal issues, I also understood that the problem is a small one and shouldn't take long to correct (Step 1: issue check in same amount issued to the other seven faculty Step 2: hand check over Step 3: Optional apology for the delay and the lack of planning) and that I'm expected to keep functioning in my position even when I have personal difficulties.

This morning, I received a reply that told me essentially that the University - and the person in charge - has forgotten the details and that perhaps compensation won't be given because of this.

I am so ready for an exit interview.

Maybe I Should Call Myself "Dr. Yossarian"

I do not know how I feel about this week. It should be cake, what with the holiday that wasn't really a holiday and all. But the first day back gave me the first taste of the term of what a back-to-back set of classes that were over-full felt like.

I. am. pooped.

And in weirder, oddly more exhausting news, somehow many people - read: seven - from high school found my Facebook profile, and now I'm interacting with them because it seems weird to decline their friend requests. Worse, though, this seems likely to bring a run-in with The Ex (you know, the one ex who defined what all ex's would be: the crazy one who appears year in and out to remind you why you broke up in the first place). I am not looking forward to this - and perhaps it won't happen.

Also, has anyone had any experience with The International Professor Exchange? It seems harmless and yet, my Curmudgeon-sense tingles. Perhaps it just seems like too good an idea to be true.

I'm in a rush to find a couple of good conferences, too, while trying to navigate my school's Byzantine system for helping with the conference we're presenting. I think Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 about academia and only later substituted in the Army. Today I was sent to electronic forms that aren't being used, told my request to another department on campus must be faxed, and found out that food must be delivered prior to the tables it will rest on.

Hooray.

Concluding the Summer Course Debacle

My letter to the powers that be. The things I wanted to say but wisely cut out are in brackets.

It seems like this has been a doomed exercise from the start. [If this had been a date, I'd have asked for the check and run for the door like I'd stumbled across and East Coast/West Coast rap feud. Honestly, people playing Romeo and Juliet will look to this for how to do star-crossed properly.]

The course did finally get the third student, but though she registered yesterday, she didn't appear on the course roster until late today. The new problem is that somehow the other two students didn't know the course was to be a six week course [and honestly, isn't there a standard on this?.] It doesn't show online as six weeks though those are the hours we submitted for it. [I don't have a copy of the catalog to verify how it shows there, but I'd bet my meager paycheck it got screwed up there, too]. That does mean, though, that they can't take the course unless I change it to work in a four week session.

I don't see any good way to make this a four week course, and honestly, the whole [SNAFU-ridden, Byzantine] process has left me drained and disinterested [not to mention angry, resentful, and more inclined than ever - and who'd have thought it possible - that I must find a lifeboat from this slowly sinking ship] . I'll assume someone else will explain to the students how and why the course isn't going to make.

Apologies for my frustration.

Really I put this together so that when I someday get to do an exit interview, I can give them a 30 page, reference document. Not that I'm bitter.

Excruciating

They love me.

They love me not.

That's what trying to get this summer course together has been like. In theory, tonight is to be the first night of my grad course. The problem is enrollment. Unfortunately summer courses here cost a boatload (maybe ironic since I get paid less to teach one here than I did as a grad student - $2,500 before taxes here). We have to have a minimum number of students enrolled for the course to make, and my number has been bouncing around from one week to the next. For about a week, it's been high enough for the course to be offered. Today, though, one of the students ran into a roadblock and may not be able to take the course. But they're not sure. So no one's quite sure whether the course will happen or not.

[Rant added for your reading pleasure - 4:11 pm, same day:

It is also frustrating that I had to argue with a colleague about why I won't pressure students to take the course that they'd pay too much for while I was being paid too little to teach it. Cost per credit hour goes up in the summer for students while contact hours go slightly down. And yet what I get paid for one course is paltry.

And I'm sitting here agonizing over it because, sadly, $2,500 (before taxes) will make a world of difference to me since I'm paid below average for someone with my level of experience at this type of university in this field. On one hand, I'm tempted to just call the course's time of death and get on with my own life for the summer; on the other hand, $2,500 would let me actually pay off something for the first time in three years.]

We're also working on a conference here. The person who is supposed to be taking the lead on this was to be in today dealing with all sorts of details, only they never appeared, and I wound up having to juggle lots of those things as well. I'm getting ready to say I have to stop helping with it, as I've no interest in being the hitched to the plow for a project I'm getting very little say in. I do wonder how it'll go over.

But for now, I should go prepare my discussion for tonight (assuming "tonight" happens).

Of the Madness of Fridays (and other things)

Why do Fridays never feel productive? I'm putting together a list of things, and still I don't feel like I've done as much as I should have today. So far, I have:

• done two loads of laundry
• taken clothes to the dry cleaner
• made breakfast and done the dishes
• taken bills and such to the post office
  
• gone to the grocery store
• completed and submitted a teaching grant application

Of course, I still haven't managed any work on the book today. Maybe that's the glaring hole in my day (week/month/term, too). Two days ago I had my meeting with the Dean about my 3rd year review. It was painless, really, except when the question about how the book was coming came up. I could only laugh. Still, at the end of it, when it came time to kick me in the ass and tell me what I needed to do for tenure, the comment was "Keep publishing and maybe try and do something in the community." So I left feeling alright.

But yesterday one of my students came in. I've written numerous letters for graduate schools for her, and she was upset because she'd received her first rejection. She was rejected not because she didn't fit the bill but because all of her application materials hadn't arrived.

What was missing? Transcripts. Why were the missing? Well, technically, no one can say in part because the records office here doesn't actually - and this is capital-I irony - keep any record of when (or if) they send out transcripts. They know they were asked to send them out. They just don't know if they did. When she explained, they said they could re-send them but they'd have to charge her again. She was near tears when she said, "I'm really disappointed in the University right now."

What could I say to that except "Me, too."

King for a Day

Today, by virtue of being the only faculty member in my department who isn't teaching in the early evening, I've been elected to attend the Department Chairs meeting. I would like to think that this will be a fascinating learning experience. But I suspect it will be a mind-numbing chart fest where I'll be bludgeoned with endless Excel spreadsheets of University assessment mumbo-jumbo which seems to be all the rage these days.

For whatever reason, I keep picturing it a bit like the trial from "The Crucible," but I've no idea why. Maybe it's the oddly officious way in which things are done here - so often, decisions seem to be made by scaring the herd in a particular direction. But I find it interesting that Miller could have been writing his play not about McCarthyism but about academic decision making.

We're still in the midst of figuring out things with our candidate and the entire department is on edge. Today I had to explain to our chair that someone asking for specifics probably means they're comparing us to another school that has all of those things ironed out and codified - research start-up funds, timetables, and such - and that coming into one's first or second job, those details become oddly comforting and should be seen as a search for some sense of security rather than as being picky. It doesn't help, particularly, as Dance has pointed out, that there isn't exactly a simple means of comparison among such things.