Perchance to Dream

Fall semester: day fifty-nine

Thanks to my exhaustion and the help offered to me by generic sleeping pills from Walmart, I am actually able to sleep at night now -- and sleep the whole night through if I wish -- on Monday and Wednesday nights. Before, as you may know, I would fall asleep in the afternoon, sleep for five or six hours, then wake up around 11 or 12 and be unable to go back to sleep. With the sleeping pills I no longer have to worry about that. I've been taking them after I've gotten home in the afternoons and have settled in and gotten something to eat, and when I feel tired enough to sleep, I do. And I stay asleep. I'll usually wake up a few times -- if I'm too cold, if the cats are fighting/growling at each other, or if I have to pee -- but generally I can roll back over and go back to sleep with no issue at all. Previously, once something woke me up, I'd be awake and wide awake. I now wake up rested and actually ready to go about my day, instead of a horrible train-wreck of a mess because I haven't slept as much as I need.

On Monday night, I slept for 12.5 hours. Last night, I slept for a little less than 10. Both are equal to or more than double what I was able to sleep before. My ability to actually get sleep now has turned my schedule around and has actually made me more alert and useful during my waking hours. I get a lot more done, I'm not drinking two pots of coffee every day to force myself to stay awake, and there are times when I'm at work where -- dare I say it -- I'm actually bored, which never happened before. When I went to West campus on Tuesday, the weather was incredibly shitty all day long (hard rains and vicious, unstopping cold winds), which would normally make me want to curl up under my coat in my tiny office over there and pass out for a few hours, as I didn't have a whole lot to do. Instead, I spent the afternoon creating the practice final exam for my 101 students, reading the lecture material for my 011 students and highlighting what I wanted to cover in class, and then reading the news archive for a few of the sites I follow, like io9. I didn't even touch my DS or my mp3 player, both of which I'd brought with me to stave off boredom. I'll be doing much the same today, though today I do have a stack of 210 assignments to grade to keep me mostly busy through the afternoon hours.

In other news, there have been a few new developments when it comes to things happening in my life, and most of them have popped up since I last wrote here on Tuesday morning. The first is that (apparently?) I was granted forbearance on my loans.

I say "apparently?" because I got my first statement in the mail on Tuesday night, and while it lists my full amounts of my student loans, my balance due is $0.00 and it plainly reads "this is not a bill" written across it. That day I also got an email about my loans as well that said my loan servicer would be contacting me, that on an income-based repayment plan I could pay as little as $0.00 initially, etc. Neither said anything like "forbearance granted" or anything like that, which is really what I'm looking for, somewhere, in print -- so I don't have to worry about it anymore. I want to know that free and clear, so to speak, but maybe this is how they do it. I couldn't tell you, since it's not like anyone ever tells me these things. I'll keep you updated on what happens, of course, but as of right now I'm not as worried or nervous about it as I was before. So, that's a plus. At least it seems they know that I'm a poor adjunct lecturer who is barely able to make ends meet as it is.

On Tuesday, because I was curious (as were my students), I asked the West campus office administrator about how I could/would/should handle my final exam for my 101 students.

Normally, of course, this is out of my hands -- were I teaching 101 on the main campus, the time would be set and locked in by the department, as all main campus composition students take their final exams at the same time on the same day. It's always the Monday of Finals Week, from 1-2:50PM. The rooms will constantly change every semester, but they try to group everyone together in big lecture halls with six or eight sections of whatever class all taking the exam at the same time. I will have to be there for the 011 exam on main campus at that time, probably with a lot of other 011 students in the room from other instructors as well. However, since I teach my 101 on the West campus, they have a completely different schedule for their students' exams, since they're an extension campus or something like that.

"Basically, it's whenever you want," the office administrator lady said. "It's whenever works for you and whenever works for your students. A lot of instructors over here will administer their final exam during the last class session of the semester."

"I can do that?" I asked, incredulously. I'd never considered it before.

"If that works for everyone, yes," she said. "those instructors who don't do that usually do them during normal class time in finals week."

Wow, I thought. That's really nice. I began planning in my head. She told me to tell her once it was finalized within my class so that she could "put it on the schedule," so to speak.

I have a few options I have been turning over in my head for the past two days. The first, obviously, is to give it during the normal class time on the last day of class. I checked with the office administrators in the department on main campus, and was given the go-ahead on that; I'll get the exam early (the Wednesday morning before I administer it on Thursday over there) and that's been totally greenlighted if my students are able to do that and want to do that. I'd need to modify my lesson plan a bit for that last week of classes to permit it, but it can be done easily, and would save them (and me) from needing to come back to West campus on the Tuesday of finals week if it can be avoided.

The other option, of course, is to do it that Tuesday of finals week during normal class time, but here's the possible problem with that -- some of those students have a class right before mine, and it's possible that they may be taking their final exam for that class during their normal class time, and that would bleed over into my own class time. That's why I have to check. The same could be true for the last class of the semester in their class before mine as well, so I sent an email to my students yesterday morning telling them to find out their exam times for other classes -- especially the ones on West campus -- ASAP, and we'd plot around those.

Ideally, of course, I'd much rather do it on the last day of classes -- Thursday, December 5 -- than make them come back in on Tuesday the 9th to get them to take an exam which I will then have to drive over to main campus again to turn in to the main office. In my 102 classes I used to end class a day early so that they could turn in their papers and I'd have a week to grade them between then and their final -- that can't really happen in a fall semester when we're set up the way we are this time (with the last week of classes happening as soon as we come back from Thanksgiving), and not with classes that are scheduled on a different campus. For professors, it's a logistical nightmare.

To these ends, I'll discuss the options in class with my students this morning and we will see what we can do. I have already created two different lesson plans, or "timelines," as I refer to them -- one with the final on the last day of class and one with the final on the Tuesday of finals week. Both are workable, and both are quite similar up until the day before Thanksgiving week, when they diverge into two different paths. The problem is that I have to know today when I can schedule that final exam, because on Tuesday when I go back in there, I'll have to distribute one timeline or the other. Because I set my own schedule, I can do some probable workarounds if necessary -- especially since I'll be over there on West campus all day on class days through the evening hours, even on the last day of class. My 210 class finishes their oral presentations that night, which acts as their final exam.

The thought of only (possibly) needing to be on campus for one day during finals week thrills me; I really hope that's the case. It will give me all the time necessary to get everything accomplished in regards to tallying and posting final grades at my own pace. And, of course, it will save me gas money and mileage on the car. I must be on campus that one day regardless; the 011 final on main campus takes place at the same time as all of the other ones, so it's not like I can avoid it altogether.

As for the whole "grading partner" issue...sigh. As you folks may be aware from my talking about it when I was a GTA, even as an actual professor I can't get out of having a grading partner for my students' exams. Yes, it's ridiculous. The exams are scored on a scale of 1-5 by me, and then I trade with someone else and they do the same thing. The two scores are averaged together for the actual exam score -- and this almost never helps the student. If I give the exam a 3 and my grading partner gives it a 2, the score is a 2.5. That's a D+, when the grade I would give my student is a mid-C. I do not like anyone, anyone else, having any control whatsoever over my students' grades. When I was a GTA, I dealt with it because it was department policy. As a lecturer, as a professor, I shouldn't be forced to do this -- I know how to grade exams at this point. I know how my students perform, and I'm not exactly lenient in my grading. Yet, I was notified yesterday morning that I still must have a grading partner for my final exams this semester.

I have 28 students total on my roster for the classes taking exams (the 210 class doesn't have an exam, so I don't have to worry about them). Of those 28, I've had two at this point fail for absences and will probably have a third or fourth, three more who have never shown up to my classes to begin with, and at least one whose grades in my class are so low that the final won't save them anyway, so who knows if they'll take it. So, realistically speaking, I have 22-23 or so actual exams to grade. We're paired up with grading partners based on the total number of students we have as well as who's teaching what classes. I've been told by the Director that this will be as painless a process as possible for me, and that it will be set up to where I shouldn't have to make any extra trips to campus for grading issues -- which is good, seeing as who knows what the weather will be like a month from now anyhow, and because I want to get everything done as quickly and efficiently as possible. I don't really have time or patience for fucking around, so to speak, and I really don't have the patience to operate on someone else's schedule because they can't be bothered to grade through my exams quickly. I've switched partners before, or had someone else grade through my exams quickly just because I've had people want to wait until four days after the exam was given before they would be willing to work in the half-hour or so (at most) it takes for them to look through my students' blue books. That's ridiculous. Get in, get out, get it over with, the semester's over, LET IT END. I don't have patience or compassion for anyone else's schedules when the semester has been over for four days by the time we give the exam, so if I get a grad student who's still grading through their students' papers or still trying to finish papers of their own for their own classes, sorry, that's on them. When I was a grad student, all of my own work was done well before the final exam was administered. If I could do it, so can they. It's not my problem if they can't manage their time effectively.

In years past, I've proctored the exam from 1-2:50, had the exams graded by both myself and by my partner by 3:30, and had everything tallied and uploaded by 4PM, getting home before rush hour traffic hit -- and usually hauling home at least one or two full pizzas with me, as the "finals feast" is that morning. If I can replicate this experience this year, I will be incredibly happy. And, mind you, that was when I had close to fifty exams to grade at the end of the semester.

I want to start telling my friends and colleagues within the department things like fail everyone you can for your classes, but I won't. Why? Because I'll need students to teach in whatever sections I get for the spring, and if there aren't as many students, not as many sections will be offered. I do not know yet what I will teach in the spring, but I made my formal declaration of availability to teach as many sections possible of anything offered on either main, West campus, or both, on Monday. The department administration knew I planned to keep on as a lecturer anyhow, though they like to be told personally and to have it in writing so that they know who's available and when. My flexibility in hours/days/location definitely helps me land more sections when they become available, especially on West campus (where other instructors don't tend to like to go to teach, for some reason). I told them I could take on four or five sections of anything, if available, since I'm teaching three sections of three different classes right now with no issue. The only issue I have this semester is the fact that I must be stuck on West campus for twelve hours straight on Tuesday/Thursday, which -- if I were teaching other classes during my downtime there -- I really probably wouldn't notice that much. If I get four or five sections of something, I probably wouldn't be able to come home at noon on Monday/Wednesday either, but the money would definitely make up for that (in addition to allowing me to save as much money as possible for the wedding).   

I've been told by the administration they'll do their best when it comes to giving me classes to teach, though it won't be known how many sections of anything will be offered at least until the enrollment numbers come in for the spring. Spring registration begins on November 14 and runs through the 19th, I believe. I'm not incredibly concerned about it, really; the vast number of students taking 011 and 101 this semester will more than likely move on to 101 and 102 next semester, respectively, so if I'm teaching either of those I'll have a good number of students, and we're going to have several GTAs who will no longer be teaching after December as they finish up their degrees (as mentioned before), so those spots will be "open," so to speak. There's always those 8-week courses, too, which aren't given to GTAs. So, there are options. I'm actually sort of excited about it.

In other news, it's below freezing this morning for the first time this fall -- the temperature outside is 30 degrees, and the cars and yards are all coated with a thick frost. Tuesday, with its wind and whipping/blowing rain, was miserable -- at least I don't have to deal with that this morning. Today it's just the cold. On the plus side, the Monte Carlo tends to love the cold weather. On the minus side, I tend to hate it. I'm already gathering my layers to dress in for the day, as since I'm stuck over there on West campus until late this evening, I'll have to be able to stay warm.

Today is actually pretty quiet and rote when it comes to my classes. We're discussing the exam issue in my first class and we're doing mini-workshopping/Q&As, and then I'll grade my 210's papers in my off-hours before I cover resume-writing tips and cover letter issues/problems in there tonight, as well as doing some workshopping of those aforementioned resumes and cover letters. On Tuesday, I collect the next set of papers from both classes, so I'll have something to do in my downtime then as well.

As for my car, she seems to be running pretty well. The transmission issues seem confined to the automatic overdrive gear, which I use mostly on the highway. The normal drive is perfectly fine. Yes, there is a difference; in the latter, the engine cycles up more slowly and cycles down more quickly, but tends to use a bit more gas -- it's more of a "city driving" gear. In the former, the engine cycles up a lot more quickly, with its 215hp V6 get-up-and-go, and cycles down a lot more slowly. It depends greatly on the day, the weather, and the traffic which one I'll use, but I've never noticed any goofy issues with the normal drive -- so I've been using it a bit more often. Again, I tend to notice these issues a bit more when I've run down the gas tank as well, and she doesn't give me any trouble most of the time when she has a full tank. I think that car really just likes having a full gas tank at all times; it seems to make even the minor creaks and croaks in a car of her age go away. I'll have to get gas this morning on my way to West campus, so I'm mostly expecting a rather smooth ride.

I also didn't mention it before, but Daisy has been in a lot of back pain this week. Her shoulder blades and all of the muscles up there are either spasming for no reason, or they've somehow been pulled. She wakes up crying because she can't move, and Daisy tends to have a decently high pain tolerance (unlike myself). Finally, after a few days of my begging for her to do so, yesterday she went to the doctor. Apparently she's pulled muscles and/or irritated nerves somehow in that area of her back, and her doctor prescribed her some muscle relaxers and physical therapy. Physical therapy isn't covered by her insurance (which really doesn't make that much sense), so she'd have to pay $40 twice a week for appointments for it, which she can't afford. In lieu of that, she's going to try getting a deep-tissue massage today to see if that helps the muscles, and may begin visiting a chiropractor if the problems don't get any better. She doesn't know how she pulled the muscles or hurt the nerve or what-have-you, and she's never really had back problems before now aside from some minor fatigue aches and the like. I was concerned because it was her upper back, not her lower back, which could have been anything -- not just muscle related, but internal like her heart, lungs, etc.

On that note, I'm readying myself to leave the house. It says it's 34 outside now, but it's not like that's a comfortable temperature, or anything. I'm wearing a thick turtleneck under a sweatshirt and khakis with thermal bottoms underneath with two pairs of thick boot socks. I've gotta be outside a lot today, so I'm going to be comfortably warm when I am. I'll have my thick wool peacoat on, too.