Call Me Rico

Fall semester: day two


Hoo boy.

Where do I begin?

The fall semester is a strange semester; it always is. I've mentioned before that for most of us, it's also back-breakingly hard and exceedingly busy -- and even as a third-year, this hasn't changed. I was hoping it would, really.

Parking on campus is more of a nightmare than ever; because of construction on our student union (crazy, very large-scale construction) and further construction around the old football stadium, a good 30% or so of the student parking lots have been closed off and are inaccessible. This basically means that if you're not on campus by about 7:30 AM at the latest, you're not going to get a parking spot -- or you're going to drive around stalking people as they walk back to their cars after class in order to be able to snipe theirs as soon as they leave.

I arrived on campus yesterday around 11:30, and got the sole remaining spot in front of the school's baseball stadium, up against the stadium itself, a spot that was easily half a mile from my office building. That's not a joke. And it was pure luck that I got said spot. I'd heard that earlier that morning, parking and traffic on campus was so horrible that the police were directing it back and forth on the streets. I believe that. It looks like regardless of when or where my classes are, I'll have to be getting to campus as early as possible every morning this semester until the construction is completed...that is, of course, provided that it is ever completed.

This morning I made sure to arrive on campus by 7:20, and that was even after I had to get gas in the car before driving to Wichita. Even at that time, half of the parking lot I normally park in was already filled.

Yesterday was the first day of classes. I had but one class I needed to attend -- Playwriting, in the theater department, at 4:30. Beforehand, I needed to arrive on campus in order to be able to get my syllabus copied for my students and to make sure everything was going to go smoothly today.

Playwriting is held in one of the large theater buildings on campus, which wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't further from my office than my car was parked. Flat State University has a much bigger campus than most students realize, and they don't realize it because 90% of the time, their classes will all be held in the same three buildings depending on what they're majoring in. I've been a student there for two years now and am entering my third year, and I've never ventured past the art museum. I've never had a reason to. The theater that the Playwriting class is held in is probably 200 yards or so past the museum, slung amongst an array of buildings that all look the same. If you could pick a building that is the furthest distance across campus than the English department's offices, it's that one. It's a ten-to-fifteen minute walk, easily.

The class seems like it's going to be interesting, but it's also going to be really work-intensive and time-consuming. While most of that work will be creative in nature, there's a lot of it. Writing a full 30-to-50-page play is not something I'm incredibly interested in doing this semester on top of all of my other work, but it's just one of many assignments in that class -- and we're required to go view at least two stage plays both on campus and around the city, as well, at some point during the semester. It's a lot of work, and it's work that I won't necessarily have time to do. I'm strongly considering dropping the course in favor of taking something much less work-intensive in the spring for my "enrichment" credit, but I'm not sure what that would do to my financial aid and/or GTA status. What I can tell you is that with full sections of both of my 102 classes I teach as well as another lit course (Surrealism in Poetry) I'm taking on top of that, I may have bitten off much more than I can reasonably chew -- so to speak, anyway. It's going to be a very stressful, work-loaded semester regardless of whether I say in that class or not. I can already tell that by early October, I'm going to be fucking miserable -- and swamped, to boot.

After class last night, our instructor informed us that there was a free picnic downstairs that we'd been invited to as students in her class. Free hot dogs, hamburgers, and other picnic food -- macaroni salad, chips, soda, etc. Jay and I were the only two English department students who actually went ("Only a fool passes up free food," he remarked), and we found that we had to put on name tags and a colored dot sticker that was supposed to denote what part of the theater department we were majoring in.

The problem should be obvious here: Jay and I aren't theater majors. We're poets, and grad students at that. Jay looks younger than he actually is, so he can pass for an undergrad when/if necessary -- but me? With my mountain-man beard? I already look like I'm at least 35. I'm not; I'm 29, but this still makes milling around with eighteen-and-nineteen-year-olds seem a little creepy.

Jay wrote his real name on the name tag; I, however, had another idea.

I picked one of the little colored stickers at random (I believe mine was red, denoting that I was a "music performance" major), and wrote on my name tag that my name was "Rico."

Because, really, fuck it.

I was waiting on someone to introduce themselves to me throughout the picnic, so that I could introduce myself as "Rico" and speak in a fake Spanish accent, but said opportunity did not present itself. Instead, Jay and I got our free burgers and hot dogs and ate them sad and isolated from the young'uns on the steps of the theater building before going home. On my way back to my car after the picnic, I deposited my "Rico" name tag in the nearest trash bin.

As an aside, Rico is my go-to fake name, the one I've always used if there's a situation that's called for it.



Note: situations like this don't come up very often, but my name on my gradebook for the classes I teach is filled out this way:

NAME: Rico Suave
CLASS: Graduate Student
SCHOOL: The School of Love

That's not a lie, by the way. I hope I never lose said gradebook, or I'll never get it back. People will be really confused as to where to return it.

And speaking of the classes I teach...

I have two full (or almost full) sections of my classes. In the past 24 hours, I've had three students drop, and one add, my course. I'm sitting at 48 out of 50 right now, a number that is not likely to change very much from now until December.

As you folks know, I am teaching the Science/Engineering English 102 I've been teaching for over a year now. I know how to do it well, I've streamlined it, I've made my lesson plans well in advance, and have set the readings and paper-due-dates to specific times and days. I've done this because it not only saves me time, but because I've been able to help design and tweak this class during the past two full semesters I've taught it, I know how it functions best.

The bookstore ordered the newest edition of the text I teach with. This would normally not be a problem, and would only be a bonus, but said text is not the one I have -- I have the older edition, upon which all of my lesson plans are based, including page numbers and articles we'll read in the class. Said "new edition" has been stocked fully in the bookstore. I knew the new edition had become available, and made sure to tell my students via email last week that we were using the old edition, not the new one, because that's the one I had lesson plans for. The new edition is about $80 in the bookstore and on Amazon. The old edition? $2 to $7 on Amazon, used. I also did not know beforehand that the bookstore had stocked the new edition.

Well, almost all of my students had purchased the new edition of the text, and they'd gotten it from the bookstore. I don't know that the department even has the new edition of the text.

Anyway, you can see my dilemma here; the fact that my students have a new edition of the textbook isn't necessarily a problem; the page numbers will be different, but it should contain all of the articles/chapters in the edition I've always taught with. The problem is that a lot of my students blew $70+ on a textbook that they didn't necessarily need, when they could've gotten a used copy of the one I use, and told them to get, on Amazon for $2 to $7.  This is sort of on them, yes, but I may retroactively be able to save those students a ton of money if they decide to return those books and order copies of the old ones. Truthfully, the students could really use either book; depending on what the new book has in it will mean I will either need more or less supplemental materials, but I'm sure the majority of the content is the same.

Still, if this or the amount of work I will be doing in my playwriting class is indicative, or an omen of, the semester I have ahead of me? Ugh.

In other news, today is my grandmother's 85th birthday. I called her once I got home this afternoon (as I once more finally have some minutes on my cell phone) and talked to her for half an hour. She's doing well, and is in pretty good spirits despite her age and many infirmaries. There's no way I'm living to 85, no way in hell, not with how much I smoke, how badly I eat most of the time, and how much coffee I drink. I've always said I'll be dead before 40, which is probably a fairly reasonable over-under estimate.

Some of you may think I'm kidding when I say that. I'm so not. I am well aware of my own mortality, folks.

I have to be on campus all five days this week; there are meetings on Friday that I need to attend for not only the EGSA, but for our school's literary journal. As I am an editor of the aforementioned journal, I sort of have to be there. This means I'll be filling the car with gas a second time this week -- three trips to school and back between now and Friday will drain the gas tank again. Being on campus four days a week during the semester compared to my previous three-day schedule means an extra three fill-ups on average (about $90 or so) during any given month. Oh yeah, I've done the math. Being on campus more is actually costing me more money. And not just more money every month, but more overall. Yet another reason this semester is going to suck.

Oh well. I suppose I have my kitties and tie-dye and college/NFL football to placate me.