Anyway, once I'd sent my email, I clicked on Blackboard for the first time since May to check it, and...whoa. It's been majorly updated. I can't add anything to any folders for any classes yet, since those classes I'm teaching haven't been assigned to me, formally, through Blackboard or Banner, but the layout has been overhauled and changed around quite a bit. This is at least the third major update Blackboard has had since I've been teaching...for only three years.
For those of you unfamiliar with academia or what Blackboard is, it's a program integrated into the university's online/email/classes system. It can be used for a large number of things, but at the university, we English instructors mainly use it for storage, messaging, announcements, and plagiarism detection (through the built-in, and often-mentioned-here SafeAssignment). There's a "page" set up for each class we teach, and on that page we can post folders full of class documents, readings, assignments/SafeAssignments, and class announcements. At least, that's what I've always used it for. There are many other uses for it, including an interactive grade board, online journals, online testing, media center, etc. 90% of what Blackboard can do is lost on simple composition and writing classes, since most of the class instruction comes simply from, y'know, being in class and listening to the lecture. I used Blackboard a lot more for my Engineering English classes, since those students were all nerds like me and appreciated being able to click on videos from YouTube, for example, that discussed another angle of what we were covering in class. Most of my grad school classes didn't use it at all, and because it's such a pain in the ass to do anything with at times (especially the online grading component) I try to use Blackboard as little as possible outside of posting class documents and sending out announcements.
I forgot to mention before that last week when I was on campus, I learned something really interesting about the new recruits (read: incoming new GTAs) -- their orientation is now almost two full weeks long, and includes all sorts of stuff that me and my colleagues didn't have to deal with when we were students. My own orientation, in 2010, was three days -- the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of the week before classes started. It was relatively painless; there were a few long lectures, including the infamous "don't have sex with your students, but if you do, we've got good lawyers, and whatever happens we've never lost a case" speech, and then we got our schedules and offices. In fall 2011, we had to go in there another extra day because there was new Blackboard training (go figure) on stuff that approximately 5% of us would actually use, and 90% of that training was rendered obsolete by the end of that semester anyway, etc. I think I went for one day of orientation last fall, because it was the only day that all of the GTAs were required to attend. I can't exactly remember now, because by last fall it didn't matter, and I already knew the drill on everything -- it was mainly just going through the motions and having a day to set up my office a bit more to ready for the semester overall. I really couldn't tell you what the hell they've got GTAs in there for almost two weeks for now, unless there have been some really drastically-updated policies for GTAs this fall.
I'm cultivating my professor look for the fall, and as such, I haven't shaven in about two weeks, if not longer. The last time I shaved was the week before Daisy was here, so that would be a little more than two weeks ago now. I will "trim up," so to speak, before I begin teaching, but the beard is coming back, especially as my hair grows out over the fall.
"Oh no, I just thought of something," Daisy told me the other night.
"What?"
"You're going to have all of those high school girls taking your class fawning all over you," she said.
My 101 class is taught on the West campus; I've been told that the majority of the students who take 101 there take it through the local high school as seniors, for a dual-credit, off-campus course. I took my own English 101 (and 102) class in high school before I started at WVU, though it was still in the high school itself and taught by one of the normal high school teachers. My class is still a university-level English 101 class; it's taught no differently than any other 101 class.
"No, they're not," I told her, "trust me. I am not an attractive man."
Well? I'm really not, you know. Even less so when I have long hair and a beard like a wild woodsman.
"I should have you start wearing your wedding ring already, to class," Daisy told me, rolling her eyes.
I do have my wedding ring already -- the ring I'll more than likely use as my wedding ring, anyway. I bought it on Amazon months ago very cheaply to test the style and fit, and ended up liking it so much that I'll probably end up using it. If I see something else I like in the meantime, I may get another one instead -- but, for all intents and purposes, I've already got the ring now.
As an aside, for a guy as big as I am, I have relatively short fingers and small hands. They're not like, club fingers or anything, but it's just something I've noticed while looking for rings for both of us.
Anyway, changing gears...today is the first rain-free day we've had here in Newton in almost two full weeks, and right now I'm hearing no less than three lawnmowers going at once around my neighborhood, including both the neighbor next to me and the one behind me. Meanwhile, I slept until 1PM, because I couldn't care less.
I will have to mow my grass again sometime over the next few days if it stays dry; I may do it tomorrow. I have no gas for the mower, however, so I need to go get that first. I really don't care about it. It's going to rain more this coming week anyway, so even if I mow it tomorrow it'll grow another three inches by next week, and I won't have any time or patience to cut it then, either. It is the chore-iest of all of my household chores, and by far the most physically strenuous. Add terrible allergies to that, and halfway through mowing I'm coughing, sneezing, and gagging in addition to all of the sweating. When it's been rainy and the grass is actually healthy, it's a huge pain in the ass to mow it all -- I have to take an allergy pill and allow it to kick in, and drink basically a pot of coffee rapidly in order to give me enough energy to do it in the morning (before the sun gets too high in the sky and blinds me, or burns my pasty white skin off). Yet, I know I have to do it soon or I will no longer have time to do it except on my days off from teaching. With all of this rain and the (mostly) mild summer we've had for the past month or so, I would imagine I'll be mowing well into mid-September or October.
But oh well. It's not like I have any choice in the matter. I have to mow the grass, since it is, y'know, a city ordinance. I can be fined for it if I don't do it.
I've been more preoccupied as of late with school stuff, getting time with Daisy, and watching episode after episode of Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, which I will more than likely (sadly) finish tonight during dinner. I have ordered the fourth season of Community, which came out last week, I think, and that will be coming soon to replace the hole left by Todd, but still.
Daisy is very happy for me that I've gotten three classes to teach, but she is also distressed because it means we will have much less time together. I'll be working all week, and she'll be working at nights on the weekends...when I'll still be working because I'll have grading and lesson-planning to do. Unless she somehow gets her nights off switched to the weekends -- basically the opposite schedule she has now -- she'll never be able to come and visit during the semester because I'll be teaching during the days (and, later in the semester, the evenings as well) every day but Friday. Neither of us like this, of course, and we realize it's not ideal, but it is what we have to deal with right now in order for me to be able to survive and pay bills. For the first half of the semester, at least, my workload should be relatively light and my free time at home to sleep and decompress should be somewhat abundant, but that depends on what the paper schedules turn out to be this semester and how they run for the clasess I'm teaching. I may be home more, but if all the time I spend awake is spent grading and/or lesson-planning, it's not going to be that fun. Once the business writing class starts in October, everything will become even more hectic as two of my four days per week, I will be outside of the house for thirteen or fourteen hours straight again.
I shrug. There's just not a lot that I can do about it, and I need the money. Badly. This is my lot as a teacher. I told her, of course, that I wouldn't just up and ignore her, that I love her and would do everything I could possibly do to make as much time for her, for us, as I can. But it's going to be a long, lonely semester for the most part, filled with lots of work to do. I barely get a few hours per day to talk to Daisy now -- long gone are the days where we'd spend ten hours a day on Skype together. We both work and sleep and have other shit to do.
Today I vacuumed the house, as it sorely needed it. I need to clean the toilet later, possibly tonight, and I need to get a shower as well. I haven't showered in probably three days, mostly because it hasn't been 95 degrees outside or in the house, and I haven't been sweating through my clothing every few hours like I do when it's that hot. Right now it's a comfortable 82 outside, and 84 in my Man Cave.
I still didn't sleep that well last night into today; I should have, really, since a lot of my stresses were/are lessened, but I kept waking up every few hours, my allergies were killing me, and the cats always seemed to want to sleep exactly where I needed to stretch out my legs.
Maybe if it's nice in the morning I'll go run the errands I need to do before mowing the grass; I need to get gas for the mower anyway, so maybe I'll do that and go over to the car wash to finally get the layer of road dirt and Kansas dust off of the Monte Carlo. It's been over a year since I've washed the car. No, that's not a joke, that's totally the truth. I haven't washed her since like...last July? Something like that? And ugh, does she need it. She's no longer black, but a grey-brown sort of black. There's still a fair amount of shine left in her paint, even though it's old and faded; she can look good when I want her to:
And that was when she had her old, shitty back tires, too.
On that note, I'm going to end this post; I have little else to say, and I need to go eat dinner, shower, probably clean the toilet, and go to bed sometime tonight so that I can get up early in the morning.
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