Shit Day

Spring semester: day seven

I am fully aware that my semester will seem to go more quickly than most others' semesters, as I do have a pretty decent schedule (with the exception of Tuesday, which is just a long, mostly-boring slog bookended at both ends of the day by somewhat frantic classes). Yesterday, of course, was Tuesday. Yesterday was not a good day.

Let me explain.

I mentioned in my last post here that I thought the battery may be going on the Monte Carlo, and that Daisy suggested that I get it checked if it keeps acting up. Actually, the car was the only thing yesterday that didn't give me problems. Even in the cold yesterday and last night, she fired up just fine, and didn't drive stiffly or strangely as she does sometimes when it's really cold -- if she's sat for a few days in frigid temperatures, she'll creak a bit and the steering will be a little stiff for the first mile or so until she warms up. I didn't have those problems yesterday, ironically. Perhaps the universe decided to cut me a bit of a break on that for the time being. No, it was everything else (well, after the middle of the day) that went screwy.

Well, more bizarre than bad. There was bad too.

So I got to West campus yesterday morning and taught my 102 class. I had another addition to it -- another student of mine from last semester, and the more the merrier, I say -- and I taught my lessons, had them start their journals, collected sheets and leftover diagnostics from the students who needed to do them, etc. That was fine. My 102 class will more than likely be pretty mellow and partially reserved, as most of them have had me before. I talked to the administrators of the West side for a bit after class was over before I got in the car and drove over to main campus, where I didn't even bother trying to find a spot in the main lot (even though, as I drove by, I saw some open ones) and went directly up to the Metroplex to get the shuttle down. I'll only be able to park on main campus probably three times this semester -- once on my students' "library day" in about two weeks, and the other times during finals week when I'll have to be there at two different times to administer/grade exams, since my 011 class is a night class. Night classes on the main campus have different exam times than day classes there. Unless there's some sort of special day that I'll have to be there for something, I don't expect to ever get a parking spot anymore if I would arrive after 8AM.

While making copies yesterday morning, I asked one of the administrators about the healthcare plan that I now apparently qualify for through the university. Even lecturers like myself, if they teach nine hours per semester for two semesters, qualify for health insurance. This was mentioned to me briefly last semester, and I made a note of it then to bring up later when everyone actually was able to settle into a bit of a groove once the semester started. As I've mentioned here before, Daisy has been bugging me to sign up for healthcare/Obamacare/something, and until I find out what the university's plan is and what it covers, I'm not going to sign up for some "liability only" plan through somewhere else on the website if I could have much better coverage via my job.

"Well...yes, you qualify now," she said, "but I don't think you're listed as an academic lecturer."

"...what else would I be?" I asked.

Apparently there are two scales of lecturers -- there are the normal lecturers, and then the academic lecturers. What's the difference? Hell if I know. It may be one of those honorary titles that mean nothing except for recordkeeping purposes. I should, as I found out, be listed as an academic lecturer, but apparently I was not. Why not? Again, I don't know.

"I'll have to check," she said. "Because you should qualify for it and can start it now. But I'm not sure you're in the system for it."

That's a bad sign. 

"Well, let me know," I said. "Right now I'm more concerned about getting paid and paying off my bills I've had to let linger over the break anyway."

"Oh, you know you're not getting paid this Friday, right?" she asked.

"...I don't know why I wouldn't," I said, going into minor-panic mode. "I should be paid at the same time as everyone else, correct? And the first payday is the 31st."

She told me this herself long before last semester ended; that's how I knew, and made a note of it then.

She went into her office and checked. "Well, I guess you will, then," she added, "except..."

"...except what?"

"I don't think you were put into the payroll system as an academic lecturer at all; there are different forms that need to be filled out; lecturers get one form and academic lecturers get put down as another. You were put down as a lecturer last semester but this semester..."

I don't understand all of the details. I won't pretend to understand all of the details. When I'm listed as an instructor of record for classes, it's those lists that get sent to payroll for processing. They're processed, they look at my status (as well as the status of everyone else) and paychecks are distributed based on the number of hours taught and that status, as long as they have all of the information they need. But, apparently, some of that info -- regardless of whether any of it changes or gets upgraded/downgraded/etc -- has to be entered manually every semester along with those processes. At least that's the gist of it that I get. For some reason mine was changed or overlooked for the spring -- namely, what my status is as an instructor. If they don't have that, I can be listed as the instructor of record for as many classes as I want, and they'll still not issue me a paycheck because they're missing a proverbial "piece of the puzzle" in their systems. Even worse, that's apparently not something that gets a "bounce back" to the department automatically so that they can fix it -- if I'd not said anything about healthcare, which led to her taking a look at my information, Friday would have come and gone without me getting paid and I would have had no clue whatsoever why -- and if that had happened I would've been really angry.

What it boiled down to was that this semester I had that status form missing, apparently -- that was the other administrator's job and it was a simple "overlooked" item. Now, mind you, I don't know why my status changed, why it has to be updated manually every semester when payroll has had my info in their systems since 2010, not only when I was a GTA, but for the entirety of last semester as an adjunct as well, and really when nothing is any different. It is very similar to the "flag" I had on payroll last semester when it came to not having my background check form completed and approved by them, which meant I wouldn't be paid then until it was put in. I understood that, at least.

"I'm really sorry," the administrator said, and I could tell she meant it. Again, she wouldn't have known anything was wrong had I not said something. "We've fixed it now; we'll have to get you an advance check and then they'll sort it out for all the checks after that."

...just like they had to do last semester.

"Okay, so what's the game plan here?" I asked. "What do I have to do?"

"You don't have to do anything; I've run the paperwork downstairs and sent it off to payroll requesting the advance. It'll be a paper check that you'll have to pick up, but I don't know if they'll have it done by Friday," she said.

"Well, that's fine anyway, as I won't be back down here until a week from today anyhow." I'm only on the main campus on Tuesday afternoons, between my two classes. "I wouldn't be here to pick it up until at least then, so if it takes longer to process it then so be it. It's not like there's anything I can do about it anyway, right?"

This, of course, is not great news on any front. It means, basically, that I'm in the same situation I was in the fall, at the beginning of last semester. My first paycheck is delayed. If everything goes through like it's supposed to with this sort of thing, I will have to go over to the payroll office next Tuesday, pick up a paper check that I can't do anything with until I mail it home to my parents to get them to deposit it into my account, and at the very least I won't have any access to that money to pay my bills with for an extra week, if not ten or eleven days, depending on how long the mail takes to get back home. Though I don't think I'll have any new bills due before then, I also have $200 or so to my name until that check is in my bank account -- which essentially freezes my assets for almost an extra two weeks that I was not expecting to have to wade through this payroll bullshit that isn't my fault yet again.

When I pick up the check, or when I get the confirmation from the administrator and payroll later this week (possibly, hopefully, today), I really want to ask if there's any way they can not give me a printed check and just direct deposit it like they do with all of my other paychecks. I don't care if I have to fill out extra forms for a one-time direct deposit, I don't care if it takes an extra day or two of processing or what-have-you -- it's a hell of a lot faster to do that than to get a paper check, bring it home, mail it to my parents, wait until it gets there, and then have them take it to the bank. An extra day or two of processing is nothing compared to what could be a week or more of waiting and hand-wringing because I can't pay any new bills that come in until said check is deposited into, and clears, my account.

The reason an "advance" check like this (even though it's not really an advance) cannot be automatically direct-deposited is because the payroll is set two weeks in advance before the funds are disbursed to the university's working population. I mentioned this last fall. Once those amounts are set and they pass a given date, everything in their systems are set up for those disbursements and those ones only. Anything after that date is put onto the next pay cycle, and thus getting something late like this (three days before the pay date) constitutes an "advance" on that next cycle. Make sense? If there's no forms or anything like that which I can do for a one-time direct deposit with the university, I'll have to call and/or do some research with my bank to see if they have electronic deposits available; like, if I can give them all the numbers on the check or what-have-you, or take a picture of it, and see if they do that. A lot of banks do that now. I'm not sure mine does. If they do, it would save me a lot of time and stress.

"You should just open a local bank account there and put that check into it," Daisy told me last night.

"It won't matter this time around anyway," I said. "Once that check gets into my account, it will almost automatically be completely depleted by paying off bills. I'd open an account just to have to close it in a few weeks anyhow."

Plus, of course, it's not like they magically hand you a debit card and/or a checkbook when you open a new bank account -- those things take time to make and send out to you. And, again, it's not like I know how much the check will be. I have a rough idea, based on last semester, but with all of this shit going on...who knows.

Anyway. For the moment, there's little I can do about it. I have to wait for confirmation first from the administrator and payroll to see that everything's gone through, and I can then go from there. As always, stuff like this is all out of my hands.

So, already frustrated from that problem, I did the rest of my work for the day, messaged Daisy on the still-very-unreliable wifi the campus has (since apparently the ethernet port in my office has not yet been fixed) to let her know what was going on, and then went to teach my evening 011 class.

My evening 011 class is a mess. And I do mean mess when I say that. I have nineteen students. Eleven of them are international students. Of those eleven international students, only about five or six of them seem to be able to write, speak clearly, or understand any English whatsoever, at least based on the lecture I gave last night and their confusion with the diagnostic essay. I know this because for my 011 classes, i creat the diagnostic myself, and it's very simple: you get three quotes to use as writing prompts. Write a five-paragraph essay about one of those quotes, what you think of it, whether you agree/disagree with it, how it has applied to your life/a time you felt the same way, etc. I keep the quotes relatively simple (this semester, for example, one of the quotes I used was a Conan O'Brien quote). It is not difficult. It's really not difficult for anyone who understands the basics of the language and how it works. I still had many students -- most of them students who should be in an ESL course and not mine, saying "I don't get it," and "this doesn't make sense," or "I don't know how to do this." This is a big, big problem when the entirety of the class consists of them writing short essays and learning how to organize said essays around topics and reasoning for those topics. I mean, that's the basics of the course, and if they can't understand that put into simple terms, they're going to have a really rough time getting through the course...if they stick with it at all. I really can't simplify it any more than it already is. We go through grammar and structure exercises in class. We read examples of good short pieces that are very similar to what they'll write. They write simple, short (400-500 word) essays around easy topics they can take in any direction whatsoever.

I cannot make this class much more simplified than it already is. It's already, basically, sixth grade English. I already have lessons on what a sentence is and what nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives are. To simplify it any further would be me telling them about the alphabet. I'm not kidding. I mean, I don't know what else to say here.

I have not yet read through most of the diagnostics, but the ones I did glance at depressed me. It's not these students' faults, of course, if they were placed into the wrong class, or if they knew they needed an 0-level class but this was the only one available this semester. I can't help that, honestly, and neither can they. As an instructor, even a professor, I can only do so much. As I mentioned to the Director's wife, and as she agreed with me, placing a few of these students in a different section, an 013 section, may be possible if necessary. Re-placing more than half my class, even if they shouldn't necessarily be in my class, would be near-impossible. Especially as next Tuesday's class will be week three -- almost 20% through the semester already. Under different circumstances, such as a class where I wasn't locked out of the room on the first night, or a twice-a-week daytime class, it would be more do-able. As it is? I don't know if I, or we, will be able to do anything at all at this point. And that puts me in a really difficult situation when it comes to my lessons and grading, and how much leeway I should and shouldn't give. I have to be fair with all of my students -- I can't give one student slack without giving them all slack on something. And, again, the class is already almost as absolutely basic as it can be.

At the end of the class, I was tired and sort of frustrated. I was also cold and not feeling that great about how that class may turn out for the rest of the semester. When we left, one of the American students was chatting with me; he missed last week because he thought the class was an online course, and seemed to be a rather nice guy -- ten-year veteran, still in the national guard, two overseas tours and a deployment to Katrina for cleanup duties -- I mean, that's a relatively rough life. I have somewhat of a soft spot for veterans anyway. As you may know, the only charity I consistently donate money to several times a year (when I have it, anyway) is the DAV. I know many veterans; many of my friends are veterans. Many of my family members, both on my side and Daisy's side, are veterans. I respect them highly.

We walked over to where the bus stop was for the shuttle back up to the Metroplex. I saw one go by as I'd left the building, so I knew the next one should be coming soon. It didn't. I waited and waited, with this guy from my class. Finally he offered to just take me up there, as he was parked in the next parking lot over. As it was getting late and the clock was ticking for traffic -- there was a basketball home game last night, and if I got off campus at the same time all of the game traffic let out, I'd be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic not only on the main drag in front of the university, but on the interstate bottleneck for an hour -- trust me, I've had to come home on game nights before, I obliged him. Again, nice guy. Respectful. All of the vets I've had as students have been incredibly respectful towards me.

As we're getting up to the Metroplex, the gas light comes on in his truck. He's almost empty (something that I would've noticed myself long beforehand, but whatever) and he had a 40-mile drive back home.

"I hate to ask this," he said, "but do you have like ten bucks so that I can get some gas on the way home and get there? I didn't know I was almost out."

Mind you, I never carry cash on me. Ever. I wouldn't even take my wallet with me to campus if it didn't contain my driver's license and university ID. I never use money unless I'm going shopping, I never carry it, nothing. This put me in a bit of a predicament. I had no financial obligation to my student, obviously. I was, however, grateful that he'd given me a ride when the buses (which were probably running slow/late because of the basketball game) didn't show up, and it's not like I wanted the guy to get stranded along the side of the road -- I mean, I could see the gas light on. I saw the needle on E. It's not like he was bullshitting me. But the fact was, I didn't have any cash.

"I don't carry any of my money with me when I teach," I said. "I have two one-dollar bills, but that's it....well, no, wait."

I looked through my wallet until I found what I thought I'd had with me -- and I did -- an old Visa gift card with about $20 or so on it.

"I do have this," I said. "If it'll get you home and put some extra in the truck, take it and use it. It's what I had left over from using it for groceries a while back. It's all I've got, but if you need it, I'm more than happy to help -- especially since you gave me a ride up here to my car."

He was, sort of, astonished. And thanked me profusely.

"If you want, I'll give you some cash in class next week to make up for the difference," he said.

"If you want," I said, "that's fine. But if you need it, use it. Again, I'm happy to help if I can."

He thanked me again, dropped me off at the car, and left.

Do I expect to get cash next week in class? Eh, probably not. I don't know, though. It doesn't really matter to me if I do, to be honest with you. I was happy to do a good deed and help someone out when they needed it, regardless of who it was -- student or otherwise. I would've done the same for anyone. It doesn't matter that my own finances are in the shitter right now -- $20-something on a Visa gift card, of all things, isn't going to make or break me, and I know how much I'd appreciate it if I were in the same situation. Knowing my luck, I may be in the same situation at some point. Maybe he knew that he was almost out of gas and offered to give me the ride because he wanted to bum gas money from me -- does it matter in the long run? No. He still wouldn't have been able to make it home without my help regardless of whether he'd given me the ride or not, so it's inconsequential.

I returned home around 9:40 PM with a pounding headache -- it had been a really long, really stressful day and evening, and all I wanted was to get my work clothes off and just go to bed -- which I did, after eating a small dinner and talking to Daisy for a bit on Skype about the events of the day. I was just burnt-out and mentally exhausted, with nothing to do but sleep. By the time I got to bed it was well after midnight, and I'm pretty sure I was only awake in bed long enough to get comfortable and let the cats find their spots around and on me before I was out. I slept until well after 10AM.

When I woke up this morning enough to be alert and mobile, I checked my faculty email to see if there were any updates on the payroll problem -- there weren't, and still aren't. One of my students who missed my 102 class yesterday emailed me to find out what the journal topic was, and I replied and told her. I checked my rosters again, and found that I'd had a student drop that class in the overnight hours -- interesting enough, it was her. I sent her an email to ask if she'd meant to withdraw, since she'd just asked me what the topic was a few hours beforehand. I never got a reply, but she's still not on there.

I also never heard from the vet student if he'd gotten home okay and was able to get gas, but I assume so, at least. I had a few other emails from students who had either missed class or who were worried about what was done with the diagnostics, and replied to them one by one. Other than that, I've done relatively little today but write this blog entry and take a shower. I don't have to leave the house to teach for another three hours, and I have to get gas myself before I make my way down to West campus tonight. In rough calculations, I've found that my Tuesday round trips this semester, as they involve driving to both campuses and then coming home, are about 60 miles. Driving to West campus alone and back is 52, and driving to and from main campus alone is 48. This means I put an average of 164 miles on my car every week, and I fill up when my trip meter hits 200 (even though I still have a good amount of gas left after that). It looks like I'll be filling up almost every Wednesday night before class until, or unless, a scheduled day changes, classes get canceled, or there's a snow day. Luckily, I have space on two of my credit cards for that until my pay gets sorted out, and I shouldn't need any more groceries or anything along those lines until after the weekend (hopefully). As for everything else, I just have to play the waiting game once more until things get sorted out. Luckily, Wednesdays start the downward slope of my week -- I teach at night, my short 210 class, and then I teach my 102 class again on Thursday morning before my weekend begins again. It can't come soon enough; yesterday had enough stress and problems to deal with to where I just want to bury my proverbial head in the sand.