As the semester winds down, I find myself more and more tired by the day. This is not a good thing, as my workload -- previously constituted of mostly my own work, and now fully consumed by student papers one after another every week -- ramps up. It seems I can never get enough rest, and that my body is constantly tired while my mind is mostly awake. This is sort of my lot in life at this point, I think. Add to this that we've still not heard anything about comps, and all of us who are graduating this semester are at least somewhat still on-edge.
I told my mother that I'm not going to prepare graduation announcements -- even though graduation is one month from today -- until I get those results back and they are "a lock." Mind you, I know nobody can or will come to my graduation except for Daisy, but it's more of a customary sort of gesture at this point. I'm not in contact with the vast majority of my family on a regular basis, only my parents, my brother, and occasionally my grandmother when I get the chance (or have the minutes) to call her. I'm sure most of the rest of my family knows I'm graduating and engaged and all that, but for the most part they go their own ways and I go mine. Also realize that I've not yet gone over to the bookstore to purchase my cap and gown or whatever other regalia is required to "walk" in the ceremony, whatever that entails, nor have any of us been given any sort of real information on that either. Again, it's like pulling teeth to get any info out of anyone in that department about anything these days.
Yesterday, I took my students to the library for their "library activity day," where they were to look up three sources for their final paper in the course and for their Proposal/Annotated Bibliography assignment, which is due in class tomorrow. I also found out that two students are on some sort of academic activity team (I couldn't tell you what it is offhand) and that they will be forced to take a make-up final exam as they will be in Michigan over finals week. This entails that I arrange with the department for them to take their exams early -- probably next week or the week after, as they have no other real choice of times. The end of finals week, as you know, is graduation day, and the day after that I'll be going to Omaha for several days. I discussed this with the chair, and it's pretty simple -- they'll just take an alternate exam than the others, earlier before the actual exams are given, and probably in the writing center. I'm personally unavailable, obviously, for them to take it after the normal exam because (as mentioned before) I'll be graduating, and because I'll be grading all of my other students' exams as well with a grading partner during that time, which is something that is bound to cause mass confusion and frustration if said grading partner operates on a different schedule than I do. My objective for finals week is always to get in, give my exam, grade it and submit the grades, and get out -- that schedule is doubly important this semester as in the interim, I will be moving a lot of shit out of my office since I'm graduating -- something that isn't necessarily going to be fun to do, and then Daisy is coming down on Thursday evening before I go back in on Friday for the actual graduation ceremonies. Because of that, I desperately need everything to go as smoothly as possible for the foreseeable future. Over the course of my graduate school education, I've accumulated a lot of shit in that office, not all of which will be easy to move back out of there when I'm done. Most of the less-important stuff, such as old books and the like, will more than likely be given away to anyone who wants them just so that I don't have to take them home.
When I came home this evening, I talked to both Daisy and her father on Skype for a while before going to bed around 8PM. I was awakened around 3AM, maybe later, by one of the most ferocious thunderstorms to hit Newton since I've been living here -- one which knocked out power for a bit and brought thunder, lightning and rain so hard and so loud that the cats hid under the bed -- and they're not even afraid of storms, really. Once that hit, and once the power was knocked out for a few minutes, I figured that once more it was best that I come back upstairs and see if, oh, there were any tornadoes or the like headed my way. This is Kansas in tornado season, after all. There weren't, but this morning I did read this message from the local ABC affiliate in Wichita, KAKE:
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Severe weather is anticipated to enter KAKEland later Wednesday afternoon. There is a broad risk of hazards today, from tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds to wintery precipitation.
Areas southeast of the Kansas Turnpike stand the greatest risk of experiencing severe weather, including tornadoes. The Wichita area is more likely to see large hail, up to the size of ping-pong balls and damaging winds. The Storm Prediction Center has placed Wichita in a slight risk of severe weather, while the areas south east of the turnpike have been placed in a moderate risk.
Oh, how pleasant.
Look, I knew the weather was supposed to get shitty -- when I came home yesterday afternoon, I put my car in the garage in anticipation of it. What sucks is that today is my day off, and I have shit I have to do. I need to run several errands, including getting a few books of stamps and putting gas in the car, and I'm not going out to do those things if there's a possibility that a severe thunderstorm with hail the size of ping-pong balls could just blow up out of the blue and destroy my car. I guess I'll save that stuff for Friday -- though I will have to get gas tomorrow morning when I leave the house for campus.
By the way, KAKE, learn how to spell the word wintry, please.
The wintry precipitation they're calling for is on the northwest part of the state, hundreds of miles away from me. They could get a ton of snow out there, apparently, along the Colorado and southwest Nebraska borders.
This weather is full of shit. Seriously. Yesterday it was in the 40s all day with hard, cold winds. Again, it's mid-April. We're almost 2/3 of the way through April. Weather, please stop forcing me to wear layers every day and let spring actually arrive and settle in. Not to mention that it's still killing my allergies with all of this warm/cold waffling, rain, snow, ice, storms, etc every other day. This is probably a huge part of why I've been so incredibly tired as of late.
I have three papers left to grade today; they were left in the folder outside my office over the weekend, and they were all on SafeAssign on time, so I don't really have any choice but to grade them. I'm not an incredible hardass; if a student gets a paper to me, I'll generally grade it. I'd rather grade it than give them a zero for it. These papers are what I plan to spend an hour or two doing this morning, since I'm awake, before I possibly go back to bed later on -- especially if it's just going to storm all day long anyway. I've had heartburn/acid reflux for the past two days that's been bugging me, and hopefully getting enough rest will make it sort of slack off a bit. Daisy's asleep anyway, since she has to sleep during the day (and she goes back to work tomorrow night). Meanwhile, I can't even do laundry or run the dishwasher -- I'm almost certain that if I tried either one, it would overflow the drain in the basement again, what with all the rain we've gotten over the course of the past eight hours or so -- it's still raining now.
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