Orientation, Day Two: Overheated [Redux edition]

Countdown to fall semester: two precious, precious days

No, before any of you freak out, my car didn't overheat and blow up or anything like that. Believe me, if that had happened, I wouldn't have waited ten hours or so after getting home to write about it. The car, to the best of my knowledge, is just fine. It's the temperature that's fucked.

Case in point: this afternoon, while driving home, the actual temperature was 105. Again. Right now, it's 11:45PM. It's still 88 outside. The difference between 88 and 105 when it's muggy and sticky is, in fact, not really that noticeable. You may think it would be, but in Kansas, it's not.

The second orientation day went fine enough, I suppose. It was, at least, shorter than originally predicted by about two hours or so -- I was home by 3PM. Basically, today's training sessions entailed two different things -- clicker systems and Blackboard. For those of you who work in (or, conversely, are current students of) academia, Blackboard is probably nothing new to you at this point, as something like 90% of universities across the country use it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's basically a do-it-all sort of program that allows us as GTAs and professors to put content online for our students to be able to access it, including assignments, grading, tests, course documents, etc. As I attended undergrad at WVU when the "internet age" was just gathering steam, the school didn't have it then, and I never had to worry about it. As a GTA, however, I rely on it almost on a daily basis as an online source and communication device with my students, as well as my own professors.

"Clickers," as they're called, however, may be new to most people in academia or otherwise. This is the first semester that Flat State University has required the use of them for those of us teaching sections of 101, though they have apparently been in use for years in several other departments within the university. What a "clicker" is, simply, is a little radio-emitting remote control that students have to buy and use in class discussion, and they cost something like $43-45 each. They can be used in myriad ways, though most of the time for classes like 101 they'll be used for quizzes, polls, learning games, etc. They run through a program that syncs up with PowerPoint (if an instructor doesn't want to use PowerPoint, don't worry, there's a stand-alone version of the program too).

Anyway, my main point is that the 101 instructors (who aren't teaching specialized sections or online courses, of course) are required to use them in their classes this fall, but no one else has to. This means, of course, that almost no one else will, if anyone. As I am not only teaching 102, but a specialized science writing section of 102, I am doubly exempt. However, most of the new recruits who will be teaching as GTAs are 101 instructors -- unless there is a dire need to cover an extra set of 102s or they've long beforehand specifically requested and/or had a previous specialization in something else (like ESL), that's the class we start out with as GTAs to get our proverbial feet in the door of teaching.

Because of this, and because of the possibility that any of us may have to teach 101 again before our eventual graduation, the training on the clickers was made mandatory for all of us. This, of course, I can understand as an introductory measure, as it's the first time their use is being spread throughout the department in a sweeping fashion and the university wants everyone to become familiar with the technology -- especially those of us who have the ability to choose whether or not we want to use them, because I'm sure the company is banking on "swaying" some of us who wouldn't normally use them. For me, however, unless something disastrous happens with the science writing classes I'll be teaching (or if the department loses the joint funding we get for said classes via the school of Engineering), I fully expect to be teaching the science writing courses for the rest of my graduate school career -- unless I somehow fall ass-backwards into a fellowship for my third year there, which is not only unlikely but highly so. As I've said before, good writers get fellowships, and I'm mediocre at best. At least in my opinion, anyhow.

Anyway, because of the requirement to be there as part of our two-day orientation, me and many returning others who will be teaching 102 or other specialized courses endured nearly three hours of instruction and lectures on technologies that we'll probably never put to use. We had two long breaks between sections of the instruction, and on each break, fewer and fewer of us second-and-third year students returned -- I assume it's because they were thinking something along the lines of fuck it, this is a waste of my time. Apparently there's going to be some sort of disciplinary action for skipping out on parts of orientation...or at least that's what a sternly-worded email from the Director said this afternoon when he realized that people were just up-and-leavin'. I didn't particularly mind the training -- whether I ever use clickers or not, it's good information to have, though I do think it should've been an optional part of the day for everyone but those who teach 101 and will be forced to use them. After all, I'm sure they'll do an instruction day like this every fall for as long as the department/university uses the devices...which means it's something we'll be repeating next fall as well.

The Blackboard "training session" of sorts was much like the one we had last year when I was a new student, though the university has now completely upgraded to the newest version of the system, which offers a lot more options for things to do. I took a lot of notes during that training session, actually -- there's a lot that I may put to use in my lessons, especially for this new science writing class I'm teaching, and a ton of new stuff that may otherwise end up useful for me in the future.

Once that session was done -- a little after two -- we were allowed to leave for the day. This was a little more than two hours before our training session was supposed to end, and with how all of the new recruits had been slogging through these orientations and meetings since around Tuesday, nobody put up a fight (for obvious reasons). I had already finished my other work for the day, so I already had my stuff with me and drove home.

I actually got a lot of work done on campus this morning before our training sessions started. Last night, as you know if you read my last post, I spent a lot of time crafting my syllabus. My supervisor told me that she was quite assured my syllabus was fine, but if I wanted to send it to her, I could. I did, and received an email full of nothing but compliments about the changes and upgrades I'd done to it. The final syllabus for my classes clocked in at five pages, which I made a copy order for this afternoon between training sessions.

That copy order was, unfortunately, for fifty copies. I have a maximum of twenty-five students that can enroll in each of my classes. That's the "cap," as they say. As of this afternoon, my course numbers had not been entered into the Banner system so that I could be established as the "instructor of record" for the course, but the office administrators could look into their own records and tell me how many students I had -- and I was told, originally, that both sections were completely full. As in a full 50 students' papers to grade three times throughout the semester.

Hoo boy.

I've never had a full fifty students before. The closest I had was last fall, when I had 23 in one class and 22 in the other for the entire semester, a total of 45. Last semester I had a grand total of (I think) 13 in one class and 18 or so in the second when all was said and done.

So, because I was expecting a full load of students, I set up the diagnostic essay copy order for 50, as well as the syllabus. Better to be safe than sorry.

Later in the afternoon I was notified that I don't have a full fifty, and that the office administrator had either looked at the wrong list or was thinking of someone else. However, I still had no clue how many students I had, because my class numbers hadn't been registered on the Banner system yet.

Tonight I can tell you that those numbers are now indeed in there, and I have a full roster for each class: 12 in my first class, 15 in my second, for a total of 27 students.

Much better than fifty. Much, much better.

Of course, more may enroll between now and Tuesday morning, so I'll be keeping track of the names and numbers between now and then. I also noticed that I have two of my students from last semester rejoining me for the science writing class, and both of them were good students, so at least I'll see a few familiar faces.

In other news, I now have to reset all my printer settings on my laptop because they've apparently wiped all of those settings (as well as all of the preset preferences) from the school's servers over the summer. This isn't a big deal, it's just a pain in the ass, and I'll have to deal with it on Tuesday morning when I get back in there on campus. I didn't have time today, and opted instead to print off my stuff -- including my office hours sheet and new profile for the "GTA wall" -- from a colleague's office.

Why did I have to make this new profile for the GTA wall, you may ask?

Well, aside from having a much better picture to go along with it (my picture on here, as well as my profile picture on my Facebook page), all of the information on the old blurb about me is outdated now; it makes references to the former girlfriend, working for the newspaper here in town and for the old grocery store I wrote the book about, and was generally sort of stupid. So, I printed up a new one and posted it, using an entirely new description of myself, using this text:

Brandon [last name] is a joker, a smoker, and a midnight toker, and a man of many nicknames – The Wolfman, The Rockstar, and "English Jesus," just to name a few – but otherwise is simply a graduate student who, when not busy teaching two sections of Science Writing every semester, is working on his MFA in Poetry at [Flat State] University. His first nonfiction book, The Cash Register Confessional: Sordid Stories of Working in a Low-end Grocery Store, was published in August 2011. He currently lives in Newton, Kansas, where he lives the life of a swingin' bachelor with his Decepticon- branded Monte Carlo Z34 and three moronic cats.

I thought this sounded interesting enough at the time. I later got a message from the former girlfriend, saying something along the lines of "you know 'toker' means 'pot smoker,' right?"

I replied with "You do know they're Steve Miller Band lyrics, right?"

Because, at this point, there are only about five people on the planet who haven't heard the song "The Joker" on the radio, in movies and TV, or in their parents' record collection, and wouldn't realize the reference.

"I do, yes. Do you want to take the chance that a student/faculty not only knows those lyrics but that you're joking?" she replied.

Oh for fuck's sake, really? I keep forgetting that we live in a near-humorless state, where culture outside of right-wing politics, farming, devout Christianity, and shit-kickin' country music is practically unheard of -- so, really, I must concede that she has a point. Will my colleagues and friends, as well as most of the faculty, understand the song lyrics reference and not care or give it a second thought? Yes. But for those that don't or won't? Yeah, I should probably change it so that folks don't get the wrong idea.

I have since reworded the text from what you see above to take out the Joker lyrics entirely, and have changed around some of the structure of it as well to make it flow more smoothly. I'll put the new bio on the wall when I return to campus. That's part of working in academia, I suppose -- you're not allowed to express yourself in the ways you see fit, as everything you do (or don't do) not only reflects on yourself, but on the institution you work for. As working in that institution is what pays my bills, I have to be doubly careful -- even for something as stupid as a line from a song.

Anyway, aside from everything else going on, I must talk about the new TV. It arrived this evening (shortly before the football games started, actually) and I set it up rather quickly. It's a Philips 22-inch widescreen LCD HDTV, though it's only 720p. Doesn't matter to me, though; it works really well, and with my new flat antenna mounted on the wall, I can get all of the stations we could get before as well as at least two new ones, no converter box or rabbit ears required. I wish it were bigger, of course, but I already spent enough money on that one -- I wasn't about to spend $100-200 more for the larger sizes. Now, if I can eventually scrape together some cash for a TV downstairs again, or get a thrift store model at some point, I'll have three televisions in the house again -- one in each room I spend the most time in.

I also must say that, to some extent, the loneliness is creeping in again. I didn't think it would set in this soon, but some of it is already showing itself around my edges. Yes, I have the cats, and they help immensely, but talking to the cats isn't like talking to a person in the same room with me. I've always been sort of a solitary guy anyhow, but most of the time that's been out of my own choices -- it's never been, well, enforced on me by outside circumstances, and before if I was feeling social, throughout the course of my entire life up to this point, I could always go to another room in the house that was occupied by, y'know, another human, and have a conversation. This didn't just apply to the former girlfriend, but to when I was living with my parents as well. Now that I don't have those people in the same house with me anymore, it feels empty, filled with ghosts, etc. Just feels weird to be the only person in this big house all the time, especially now that I've got a taste of socialization again over the course of the past few days from orientation. I've started checking with friends from out of town/out of state to see when or if they'd be able to come out here for a visit, because another few months of this will be productive, surely, for my schoolwork, but it's going to otherwise drive me up the wall.

On that note, I'm going to bed. It's 3AM, and I'm tired -- not to mention that I have a lot to do tomorrow and over the weekend as a whole. I'll keep you posted.